After 2000, the practice of calling states (even noncompetitive ones) before polls closed was abandoned, and the Voter News Service (VNS) consortium (who provided the flawed exit polling data that informed the erroneous, premature call) was disbanded three years later. This practice of calling states early, either in the sense of calling eastern states before western states' polls closed, or calling any state before its own polls closed, had been heavily criticized by congress since the 80s based on studies showing it adversely affected voter turnout.
Oddly, the media's gun-jumping call of Florida and its likely adverse effect on Bush's performance in the heavily red panhandle gets scant mention today when the election is discussed (compared to the infamous "butterfly ballot"), despite it being a major point of controversy in 2000 and forever altering the way the media reports election returns.
