I guess there’s nothing wrong with consulting them, but it’s not their map. Sixteen years ago, there weren’t even standard colors for the Democrats and Republicans. (Pretty much every outlet used red and blue, but it was pretty random as to which party got which color. NBC might have had blue Republicans and ABC might have had blue Democrats, etc. In 2000, most outlets picked red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, and the maps were on TV for so long that year that the colors stuck in everyone’s minds.)
Democrats and Republicans weren’t asked what color they wanted. Why should a third party get that choice?
Here are some options:
I thought it was more that the colors indicated incumbent party and it was coincidence that 2000 fossilized the scheme with the controversy.
No, it was absolutely arbitrary. In most pre-2000 years I recall, two of the networks (say, NBC and ABC) would do it one way (say, red for Democrats and blue for Republicans) and the other two (on this example CBS and PBS) would reverse.
And four years later they would all switch. There was zero meaning intended or understood by blue and red before 2000.
The Bob Ross Party has dibs on titanium white.