Folks, take your early voting ballots and throw them straight in the garbage -- KPHO, Channel 5, has already "called" the election for President Obama.
"The 2012 presidential election is still more than two weeks away, but on Friday a CBS News affiliate in Arizona called the race for President Barack Obama," writes Daily Caller "investigative reporter" Matthew Boyle.
The story goes -- which KPHO has since confirmed -- that a graphic popped up for about 15 seconds during "People's Court" on Friday, showing Obama as the winner of the upcoming election against Mitt Romney.
With almost all the votes counted, Obama got 43 percent of the popular vote nationwide, and Romney got 40, while the remaining 17 percent of votes weren't accounted for in the graphic.
The Daily Caller was apparently dead serious in writing that KPHO "called the race," because the following comment is the most wildly popular comment left on the article:
This is not funny. This smacks of a FIX IS IN on the part of the mainstream media that Americans aren't to know about until the night of the election, but someone slipped and gave the game away. An investigation should be conducted and every avenue of detection should get under way immediately, not just for the sake of the candidates, but for the American people ASAP.
And we thought yesterday that Rachel Maddow was being egregious in her description of "voter suppression" in Maricopa County.
GOP gossiper Matt Drudge also sent this KPHO story to his followers, so this appears to be something that people are actually believing.
KPHO has since put up an explanation of what happened on its website, which we can only assume was posted after some phone calls and emails from absolutely crazy people.
The following is a statement from KPHO CBS 5 General Manager Ed Munson.
"On Friday, Oct. 19, during a test of KPHO CBS 5's election returns software, we inadvertently aired a test graphic for about 15 seconds in an episode of Peoples Court. The mistake was caught quickly and taken off the screen. With the election about two weeks away, the TV station routinely tests its equipment to ensure our viewers have the very latest results on election night. We regret the error and apologize to any viewer who was confused by the mistake."
