Michael Moore has a new book out - the 9/11 Reader. I glanced at it to see how long it would take to find a lie. Not long at all, as it turned out.

I opened the book at random and found that I was at the chapter "Nov. 2, 2002, how did we get here from there?" It said that on election night, some networks called Florida for Gore but reversed themselves after Fox called it for Bush. (I didn't buy the book so I am quoting from memory here.)

I assume that it went on to talk about Bush having a cousin "embedded" in Fox News. The cousin declared for Bush on behalf of Fox and the other networks followed Fox's lead.

Like all of Moore's best lies, this one has just enough truth to confuse people.

The networks call states before the votes are counted through a system of exit polls done at key precincts. They know, for example, that in order to win Ohio, a Democrat has to get a high turnout in northern Ohio which is mainly Democrat and they have to capture more than a third of the vote in central and southern Ohio. They pick some precincts that are typical of these areas, take exit polls, and go from there.

In 2000, the firm that did these exit polls entered some results backwards - they got Bush and Gore reversed. This was in a district that normally would vote Republican. Since it was coming up Democrat, they assumed that other Republican districts would also go Democrat and declared the state for Gore. All of the networks declared for Gore, even Fox. About an hour later they realized their mistake. With the corrections entered, there was no clear-cut winner so all of the networks put Florida back in the undeclared column.

Sometime after midnight most of the precincts had reported in and it was clear that there were not enough uncounted ballots to change the results. As the networks came to this conclusion, they called for Bush. When the automatic recount was announced, Florida was put back in the undecided column for a second time. Fearful of being wrong again, they left it undecided throughout the entire recount fiasco even though Bush was always ahead.

Nothing underhanded about it. But if Moore prefers to peddle conspiracies than events.