The Paper of Record mistakes biased assumption for fact

In today's New York Times is a story about the question of how to dispose of Florida's ballots from the problematic 2000 election. Titled "Florida Ponders Fate of Historic 2000 Ballots", the article starts out with these paragraphs:

MIAMI, Feb. 13 — The contested 2000 presidential election has largely faded into people's hazy memories of pre-9/11 America. But the Florida ballots are still there, nearly six million punch cards and their chads, stowed in boxes, stacked on pallets, wrapped in plastic.
The state has kept them for two years, as federal law requires. Now that the time is up, a pressing question for state officials here is: What do we do with these things?
"How about a bonfire?" said Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, who designed the butterfly ballots that led many Al Gore supporters to vote for Pat Buchanan.

Pure fiction. The belief that Florida voters mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan may be an agreed truism at the NYT and the DNC (is there a difference?) but as a matter of journalistic fact, it is both unproven and unprovable. Don't they have editors over there? The NYT is in serious need of an external ombudsman.