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The night and early morning of Nov. 7 and 8, 2000, is one that serves as a true inflection point for the United States. The time was around 7:50 p.m. Eastern, and all the major networks called Florida for Vice President Al Gore, effectively handing him the election with 272 electoral votes.
But there was one problem: In the quest to get it first instead of getting it right, the networks had called the race before polls closed on Florida’s deep-red panhandle, which
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