Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002)

While this film brings to light a lot of things that America citizens had not been previously aware of, what kills it for me is the Naderite impression given that both sides were equally culpable in this farce of an election.Specifically the Republican myth that "Gore cherry-picked only the counties where he thought he could get more votes," which is sadly propagated in this film. This gets on my nerves, but sadly it has stood as conventional wisdom, still parroted today from those who should know better, including the makers of this film.Why did the Gore campaign pick Volusia, Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach Counties for hand recounts so soon after the election? Easy - those (with the exception of Broward) were the counties with the highest reports of irregularities right from the get go. Volusia had some crazy computer malfunction that caused the vote totals to swing wildly election night. Palm Beach County had the whole butterfly ballot thing. And Dade County had a very high number of early reports of irregularities.In hindsight the only thing I would have done differently if I was in the Gore Campaign would be to have swapped Broward County with Duval County, Duval County being the fourth highest county with early irregularity reports.It isn't clear if Gore himself even made the decision to make the early hand recount request to the four counties. In the excellent book "Too Close To Call" by Jeffrey Toobin, it is shown that Warren Christopher and a couple others from the Gore campaign were the ones who make the quick decision to request hand recounts from those four counties. The Gore campaign was put on the spot. Florida law states that hand recounts must be individually requested from each county. It is understandable that those in the Gore campaign were uncomfortable with individually asking 64 separate counties for hand recounts, especially since the requests have to come within 24 hours after the election.After the media and the GOP stared to project the "Gore cherry-picked those four counties" meme, Gore said fine, let's do a hand recount of every vote in every county. The Bush campaign said no and that was the end of that.So in the end, after researching the subject thoroughly, I have concluded that the Gore campaign only made two tactical errors: 1) They should have substituted Broward County with Duval County.2) They should have been been as adamant about counting overvotes as they were about counting undervotes (overvotes being those votes where people both wrote in a candidate's name and marked a vote on the ballot - which is clearly a no-brainer when it comes to voter intent as Florida law states).That's all I can find - hardly an egregious crime or something that would make Gore as culpable as Bush. I do believe history will bear the truth of this out, but sadly this documentary still holds this fatal flaw in the interest of appearing fair and balanced.

Americans (and everyone else for that matter) need to see this film in order to understand how the American "democracy" has been undermined by highly sophisticated criminals. The 2000 election was stolen outright, but this alarming fact slipped under the noses of millions of Americans who aren't aware of how George W. Bush came to be president in 2000. It is very probable that something similar happened in the 2004 election. It is time for people to become aware of the threats to democracy that exist and ensure that they do not persist, for if they do they will utterly destroy the American democracy. This is another very thought-provoking film from Robert Greenwald, who has another movie slated for November release: Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

Yes, the voting process in this country is screwed up and, yes, this movie correctly identifies some of the problems. However, where it goes wrong is in blaming the problem on the Republicans... and this is 90% of the content of this 'documentary'.Election reform, and more specifically, reform of the voting process, is a non-partisan issue which both sides bring up when *they* lose an election. The problem never gets fixed because the 'winner' has the power (and our government only contains the 'winners', remember).The wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on in this film makes me want to puke. Reminds me of 'Casablanca'... "I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here!," says Captain Renault, as he pockets his winnings.

To simply dismiss this documentary as liberal nonsense is ridiculous. As the documentary points out there are a number of outstanding issues which need to be addressed and simply haven't been. For example, the fact that Katherine Harris, as Secretary of State took part in certifying vote counts, denying the extension of the certification date, etc. is astounding. The clear conflicts of interest (since she played a role in Bush's election campaign) were simply ignored.Additionally, there are a number of possible civil rights violations (with respect to an individual's right to vote) that might have occurred, but which have not been investigated (such as incorrectly labeling a incredibly large number of votes as felons and thus precluding their ability to vote).But the documentary doesn't provide a complete picture as it doesn't really represent the "republican" perspective.