I'll go one step further.
By Sunday before the election, Tim Russert and every other political analyst knew quite well that Florida was the key to the election. So did the DNC.
This is what I think really happened.
The day before the election, representatives of the DNC met in New York with the people who ran the old Voters News Service. They put forward the idea that an early call for Florida would not only suppress Republican turnout in Florida, thus making it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it would put as many as 11 others states in play for the Democrats.
While an early call was technically illegal, it was only a violation of administrative law. The fine would be chump change for a network.
I believe that the key VNS players with the networks deliberately colluded with the DNC to throw the election. After all, the Constitution forbids a revote. Individual votes can be challenged for reasons of fraud, but not an entire election. The votes are counted, and legally it doesn't matter if the networks worked to throw the election or not. The vote counts stand.
It was a win-win situation for the DNC. Wisconsin, Oregon and a few others states that should have gone Republican went Democratic due to this collusion. They almost pulled it off.
The day of the 2002 election, all VNS uplinks failed. Every single one. What are the odds of that happening the very day of an election? I believe the Administration discovered another case of pending collusion to suppress Republican turnout and turn Congress over to the Democrats. The order was given to the NSA to sabotage all the VNS satellite connections and nip this conspiracy in the bud.
VNS was shut down and liquidated only a few months later. The message had been sent.
And no, I'm not wearing tinfoil.
Nope. I was watching the election results on tv, and Peter Jennings said Florida was called for Gore, and he said "It looks like OUR SIDE is winning."
That's no joke. My husband caught it, too.