If you have ESP, do you even need the AP?

I heard KKTV was running early election results today... at 7:30 a.m. Pretty good, considering the polls don't close for another 12 hours.

Anyone else catch that bit of whimsy?

UPDATE: Kimberly Price apologized for the error on the noon news -- saying that the resuls in the ticker were just a test that accidentally got put on the air.
"... in fact, those results were only test resuilts. We apologize for any confusion and regret the mistake."

Our political guys tell me that the AP has been sending out tests for the last week to make sure everything works tonight.

EARLIER UPDATE: We just got this news release from the county elections office --

The El Paso County Elections Department learned early this morning that a local television station had been running the results for today’s Primary Election more than two hours before the polling places opened.

According to Bob Balink, El Paso County Clerk & Recorder, “This may have led many people to believe that our office had released results from Early and Absentee Ballot voting but this is not the case.”

He went on to explain, “It is absolutely impossible for anyone to have the results or know any results from today’s Primary Election prior to the polls closing at 7:00PM tonight. At that time we will begin to upload memory cards from Early Voting, Absentee Ballot and Polling Place election equipment. Until then, no member of the Election Department staff would have access or the ability to gather this information.”

At approximately 6:25AM today, Bob Balink was told by a staff member that KKTV- Channel 11 had been running a “crawl” at the bottom of the early morning television program containing the results of the Primary Election.

After numerous telephone calls to KKTV and early morning discussions with station management it was determined that a producer saw test results from the Associated Press which were distributed to media outlets over the last several days. Upon seeing these formatted test results the producer then posted the results over the air.

"In our effort to insure we have a reliable system in place for accurately reporting results this evening, test results were inadvertently aired. We certainly apologize for any confusion this may have caused for our viewers, elections officials, and the various campaigns. We will be thoroughly reviewing our pre-election process to insure this does not ever occur again. It’s important to note these were "test" results that bore NO resemblance to any actual vote totals since no vote totals have been released," said KKTV 11 News General Manager Charlie Peterson.

Balink also expressed concern that this happened since it may mislead eligible electors in the six counties of the 5th Congressional District (Chaffee, El Paso, Fremont, Lake, Park and Teller) and the integrity of the Election Department staff could be called into question.

“Without a doubt, the El Paso County Election Department, under the leadership of Terry Sholdt and Liz Olson, is among the finest in the country and certainly in Colorado” Balink stated. “I would be very disappointed if anyone called into question their integrity or the integrity of the Election Department staff because of this error by one media outlet.”