News first reached voters in Florida's panhandle at 6:49 central time -- with 11 minutes left before polls closed. The news could also have affected those waiting in line after 7 p.m, Gilliam says.
Go read #36. All I'm going to say now is that you are asking me to believe that there were 10,000 people either in line or enroute with 11 minutes left to go and that they all were so discouraged that they refused to vote for anything else on the ballot.
I used to conduct buisness all up and down the panhandle and there is little or no chance that 10,000 people waited until the last 15 minutes to vote. But does it make sense that they might tell pollsters that they did? You bet.
The media may have "called it for Gore" at 6:49, but there's another issue -- I'll have to go digging for it, but I'm pretty sure that the media announced that the *polls were closed* in Florida an *hour* before they actually closed in the panhandle.
MonroeDNA has sourced this quite well. I will add this NewsMax article on Bill Sammons book, 'At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election'
You must know that 11 minutes left to go doesn't before the polls close doesn't mean that there are 11 minutes to vote. People in line before 7:00pm are allowed to vote, even if they cast their vote after 7:00pm.
But just to see how plausible 10,000 votes is, I kicked a few numbers around. Lets say the polls were open for 12 hours, 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. This means that they were open for 60 minutes * 12 hours = 720 minutes. This means there were 72 10 minute periods during which the polls were open.
Lets say there were 4 million votes cast in the election.
4,000000 / 72 = 55,555 votes every 10 minutes.
This means that every 10 minute period had to average 55,555 votes across the whole state of Florida. Keeping in mind the panhandle is not the whole state but also more voters will vote during the last 10 minutes than during business hours and that voters already in line are allowed to vote after 7:00 pm, I find the number 10,000 to be quite plausible.