This Presidential election has divided the nation. We are a country split in two. And, as each terrible day drags by, the hateful differences only increase.

The nation I'm talking about is Australia, where the U.S. election debacle has caused a grievous separation. On one side stand the folks who get their information about the election and its grim aftermath from Australian television, newspapers and radio. On the other side stand the people who get their news from the Internet.

The knowledge gap between these groups is enormous. Even the most compulsive consumer of conventional media Down Under is getting perhaps only one-tenth of anywhere near the full picture.

'Conventional media' means, in Australia, five major television networks, one national daily newspaper, and only one major newspaper in every city besides Sydney and Melbourne, which have two each. Cable television (which only began here in the mid-90s) reaches only a small percentage of households.

We're not exactly suffering information overload down here.

But it's not the lack of information that has been the problem. It's that so much of it has been incredibly, unimaginably wrong. And the hard thing to figure out is how the Australian press has got so much of it so wrong, considering they have the same Internet access as do we all, plus abundant U.S.-based journalistic resources of their own.

I mean, how to explain the headline 'GORE FORCES RECOUNT' which ran on the front page of Melbourne's broadsheet The Age on Thursday, long after anyone checking U.S. election updates on the Net had learned that the recount in Florida was forced not by Gore, but by law. Any Florida election in which the result is decided by less than half of one percent is automatically subject to a recount.

On the same day, The Australian, our daily national broadsheet, included this information in a front page timeline of election-day events: '2.25am: Bush Calls Gore To Concede.' That, obviously, was a stupid mistake rather than a misunderstanding. It could be seen, just possibly, as an indication of how the media wished things had gone. Certainly Gay Alcorn, covering the elections for the Sydney Morning Herald, has been cheering for Vice President Al Gore all the way.

Alcorn might be the worst foreign correspondent since the concept of 'foreign' was invented. An Australian working for an Australian newspaper read by Australians, she fantastically missed the only Australian angle to emerge from the three Presidential debates. In the third debate, Gore and Bush underlined their differences on agriculture and trade; Gore is for increased protection of U.S. farming, and Bush for opening world markets.

This is a massive issue in Australia, which is blocked from exporting much farm produce to the U.S., but Alcorn didn't write a single word about it. She did, however, compile a helpful guide for Gore on how he could improve his campaign. Too bad Gore doesn't subscribe to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Election day coverage was just as pitiful. 'OLD TIME TV PUTS INTERNET TO SHAME' ran a headline in The Australian, above a bizarre piece on how the U.S. networks' colossal blunder on calling Florida early had made for 'gripping television', while various Web sites were overloaded and impossible to access. Old time TV, had, of course, suffered a low moment. The Florida call was a disgrace, and most every serious political Web site damned the networks for it.

There was a particular moment of gripping television here on election day when the local Fox News Network feed was interrupted at 5 p.m. Eastern time -- just when it looked like the whole thing might be a tie -- to present a chat show hosted by dull local radio identity John Laws. 'Laws has a contract which ensures he goes to air at 5 p.m. every day,' a Fox flunkie told me.

Little wonder that Aussies swarmed to the Web. Traffic on U.S. news and media sites increased 32% in the days leading up to the election, according to Australian online monitors Hitwise: CNN's site leapt from 13th on Hitwise?s news and media charts to third, ABC News went from 107th to 17th, and the Washington Post jumped from 105th to 24th.

It meant serious deja vu for onliners who bought the following day's newspapers. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age supplemented the offerings of their foreign staff with whatever they could grab from London's Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsday and the Washington Post. Netwatchers had read all of these articles the previous night, at around the same time they became available to local newspaper editors.

Things took an odd turn on Friday when the issue of the Florida butterfly ballot finally hit local papers. The Australian plastered the confounding document all over the front page, with arrows and panels everywhere explaining how Byzantine it was. The Age's caption read: 'The ballot paper showing the confusing, misaligned layout of candidates' names and boxes.'

Confusing? Misaligned? There were big fat arrows pointing to exactly where to punch a hole for your candidate! My seven-year-old niece was able to work it out, for Christ's sake. I tested her with a replica ballot of my own making so she could vote for lunch.

She voted for McDonald's, which was in the Gore box, opposite and below Cyanide. No confusion there.

Weird it was that Australian newspapers ran the same 'confusing ballot' line as the U.S. papers. Australia's own electoral forms are so much more confusing; at the last state election in New South Wales, one was literally the size of a tablecloth. No ballot in Australia has ever been as simple as the one the citizens of Palm Beach found so puzzling. Seriously.

(Ironic side note: all the old Florida Democrats who somehow voted twice or voted for Buchanan instead of Gore have probably been entertaining themselves for months with stupid Bush jokes. If they'd been more intelligent themselves, Gore might be now be President.)

Basic analysis went south as the Florida recount continued. At 7 p.m. Friday, when it was clear Bush would hold a slender margin in advance of the absentee votes that will likely favor him, Australia's ABC news led with: 'Al Gore is in sight of the US Presidency tonight.' By that time, nobody on Earth was saying any such thing. The electronic media was running a full half-day behind the Net.

Like everyone following this election anywhere, Australians are in a constant state of amazement and surprise. The difference is, those who chase the news online are amazed and surprised -- and much better informed -- hours or days earlier than those relying on the limp local media.