To make all of this plausible, first the panhandle voters are too stupid to know when their polls close, then 10,000 of them had to wait until the last 15 minutes before the polls closed and then turned around when they heard the news. Then on top of that, it was harder to find anyone in the panhandle who actually admitted to being duped out of voting than it is to find an honest person in Congress.
People in the panhandle knew when the polls closed, but a bunch of them stuck in traffic, after work, on the way to the polls, heard on the radio that the state was called for Gore. They turned around and went home.