HBO’s Recount Recalls How the 2000 Florida Election Was Stolen

Every four years those running for the White House try to convince voters that this is the most important election of their lifetimes.  But here on out they will be wrong — in hindsight there is no question that the 2000 election was the most important election of this generation.  Imagine how different the world would be if Al Gore had been in the Oval Office for the last seven and a half years.  Besides the obvious — the odds are the U.S. would not have invaded Iraq for example — we would have already had an enlightened environmental policy, probably there would be a surplus in the U.S. budget, non-extremists would have been added to the Supreme Court, science would be taken seriously and not attacked, and corporate lobbyists would not be writing the regulations to oversee their industries.  There are hundreds of more examples as to how much the Bush Administration has caused harm in ways a Gore Administration would not have. But it didn’t have to be this way.

What is clear is that more voters went into Florida’s voting booths intending on choosing Al Gore for President than George W. Bush, but due to poorly designed butterfly ballots, purging the voter rolls not only of felons but anyone whose name was similar to a felon’s, old and outdated punch-card ballot systems, and, of course, Ralph Nader, we now have what we have.  Until September 11th, Bush was not really seen as a legitimate President by large swaths of the country — and still is viewed as attaining the office by questionable means by millions.  Florida is where the disaster of the past 8 years began and HBO’s dramatic interpretation of events may be considered a return to a bad dream for many Democrats.

Recount is, first of all, very entertaining. The acting is superb with especially good performances from Laura Dern as the clueless FL Secretary of State, Katherine Harris; Kevin Spacey as Gore’s FL point man Ron Klain; Tom Wilkinson plays a smart and sympathetic James Baker; and, Ed Begley, Jr. is dead-on as Democratic super-lawyer David Boies.  The story in the film begins on election day 2000 and goes behind the scenes as the two teams — Gore and Bush — work the state government, the media, the various boards of elections and the courts themselves to try and get votes to be recounted or stopped from being counted. As portrayed in the film, Baker understands immediately that this is a street fight and moves to make sure that the political structures of Florida back the Bush position that once counted, there is no need for further review of the ballots.  Warren Christopher, the first main operative in for Gore, comes across as both high-minded and naive, preferring to make certain that the process is honorable over the need to get down and dirty in order to battle Bush’s forces. It is only after he leaves the scene and Ron Klain takes over the operations that the Gore team really starts to fight back. There is one interesting scene where Joe Lieberman, after a long discussion with staff as to why undated and uncertified ballots from overseas should not be counted even if they are military ballots, then undermines the campaign by going on TV and stating that all overseas military ballots should be counted no matter what.  I guess the signs were there early on.

While the information in the film is not new, what does emerge from the storyline is how the Republicans systematically rigged the system in their favor (though they really did not have a hand in the poorly designed butterfly ballots of Palm Beach County). The Republicans not only created a process in which Democratic voters were more likely to be left out, but made sure that Katherine Harris and the party’s other elected officials spun the game so that every conceivable barrier to counting and recounting votes could be erected.  They used the media better than the Democrats — and they had a final, backdoor route to guarantee victory — by delaying the recount until after the December 12th certification deadline, they could have the Republican legislature award the state’s 25 electoral votes to Bush outside of the electoral process — which probably would have been finalized if the Supreme Court hadn’t stepped in to make that move moot. And in the film all courts come under scrutiny for their political preferences taking over rather than the rule of law.

It has been over seven years since the tragic outcome of Bush v. Gore, one of the most importantly misguided cases of our time.  While watching the film I kept rooting for the earnest Gore team as they attempted to continue the recounts — even though I already knew the numbing outcome. Watching Recount did make me remember, however, not only the intense days following the 2000 election, but that those of us who believe that the election, in the end, was stolen are still correct to this day.

Recount will premiere Sunday evening, May 25th, on HBO.

 

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