Why We Need Another Recount

Now that the presidential race is finally under way, a lot of Democrats are giddy with excitement, certain that Barack Obama will demolish John McCain; and those Democrats apparently have every reason to believe that it will happen. On the other hand, there also are some others who aren't quite so sure: others who recall the outcomes of the last two presidential races, both of which resulted in surprising "wins" for yet another dubious far-rightist candidate. Those uneasy types are wondering -- and the Democrats too should be wondering -- if history might yet again repeat itself, despite the rosy way things seem to look right now.

The question is, of course, unpleasant; but it's also necessary. And we might best begin to answer it by taking a close look at Recount, which just ended its first run on HBO (although subscribers can still see it On Demand). For all its strengths, the film is deeply flawed by the same weird denial that has kept the Democrats both in the dark and out of power--and that could keep them there beyond Election Day, regardless of the will of the electorate.

Recount is a gripping movie, tightly structured and fast-paced, and all too credible. Indeed, the movie is so vivid that it hurts, as it returns us to that long, slow nightfall when we all sat watching as Bush/Cheney "won," and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. (By "we all," I don't mean Democrats -- as a New Yorker, I did not vote for Al Gore -- but we believers in the Constitution, fair elections, and reality.) Many people talk about the movie by uneasily noting that it made them feel exactly as they felt back then: crushed, defeated, powerless -- a sense of helplessness, I've heard some say, that darkens their anticipation of this next election.

Now, some might praise the movie for so strong an evocation of that moment some eight years ago, but I would say that, by inducing that old feeling of paralysis, Recount does more harm than good. Indeed, I liked it less and less the more I thought about it, realizing that it could have left us in a very different frame of mind. If the movie had been braver and more honest, daring to recount the bigger and much darker story of how Team Bush really "won," it would have had the paradoxical effect of leaving us not whimpering in remembered pain but standing up in righteous anger, calling for investigations, prosecutions and-especially-reform. HBO's own Hacking Democracy had something of that positive effect, contributing immensely to the movement against electronic voting; and there is no good reason why this movie too could not have moved us beyond fatalism.

But Recount stays on safer ground. Although the film is often chilling, its conception of the struggle in the Sunshine State is ultimately comforting, and very simple: a giant post-election brawl between the two campaigns, one nasty and one nice as pie. The Bush team won, according to this view, because they were far tougher and more agile than Gore's people, improvising ruthlessly from day to day, until they pulled it off. Thus the GOP did not engage in a conspiracy (there is, in fact, no other word for it), but triumphed sheerly through their fierce -- but surely not illegal -- tactics after the Election.

The filmmakers derived this view from several mainstream books, whose authors served as paid consultants on the project: Jeffrey Toobin's Too Close to Call, Jake Tapper's Down and Dirty, David A. Kaplan's The Accidental President, and Deadlock by David von Drehle and Ellen Nakashima. Written by outsiders (representing, respectively, The New Yorker/CNN, ABC News, Newsweek and The Washington Post), these books largely skim the surface of events, offering little background on the politics of Florida; and--even more important--they stick close to the Establishment consensus that there's no election fraud in the United States. Such, therefore, is the bias of the movie, bends over backwards (as it were) not to indict Team Bush for any crimes.

Hence the movie's over-focus on James Baker, the old cynic who was called in after Election Day to manage the theatrics -- a task he carries out with cold aplomb, and a certain scary charm, thanks to Tom Wilkinson's excellent performance. (Baker, understandably, quite liked Recount.) Meanwhile, Jeb Bush is almost wholly absent from the film, which represents him as a mere by-stander, even though his office ran the massive drive to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Floridians. On the misuse of the felons lists to sideline all those Democratic voters, Jeb worked hand in glove with Katherine Harris -- whom the movie casts as an erratic flake, who needed firm control by Baker's men. Although she was indeed a weirdo, Harris also was a dedicated supervisor of the winning effort to erase those voters from the rolls, but you wouldn't know it from Recount, which groundlessly depicts her as somewhat ambivalent about her mission. (An acolyte of theocratic luminary Francis Schaeffer -- she went to Switzerland to study with him -- Harris seems to have perceived her work against the voters as her Christian duty; and yet the film plays her religiosity for laughs.)

From start to finish, Recount tunes out, or plays down, the conspiratorial dimension of the story, and thereby represents as a fiasco what was actually a coup. The movie wrongly claims that ABC first called the race for Bush and Cheney on Election Night -- an honor that belongs to FOX News, where Bush's cousin managed the decision desk, and called it for his kinsman after many phone calls to and from the Brothers Bush and Rupert Murdoch. (At NBC there was a different drama, as "Neutron Jack" Welch -- CEO of GE, the network's parent company -- loitered in the newsroom, pestering the journalists to call it for Bush/Cheney.) While Recount does a good job showing how the e-voting machinery malfunctioned throughout Florida -- getting all jammed up with chads, counting votes as undervotes, etc. -- here too the filmmakers neutralize the story; for Recount fails to note the stunning fact that those machines screwed up because they had been fed with the wrong kind of paper ballots. The top men at Sequoia, the manufacturer of those machines, had been forewarned about that problem, and its likely consequences -- and they did nothing whatsoever to correct it. (Dan Rather broke this story on HDNet almost a year ago.)

In its only reference to the pre-election plot, Recount likewise minimizes the offense. The movie does acknowledge that a lot of Democratic voters had been wrongly stricken from the rolls as felons, or ex-felons -- a stroke of disenfranchisement that sidelined 20,000 citizens, according to the film. In fact, the toll was (at least) 50,000 voters; and, as Lance DeHaven-Smith has noted, such vote suppression was no snafu but a major crime. (In 2004, the felons lists were used again to purge more Democratic voters from the rolls in Florida.) And, speaking of law-breaking, the movie also lands a very light blow on the Supreme Court, by noting only that their intervention was improper, and their argument in Bush v. Gore unclear. Nowhere does the film suggest that Rehnquist, Thomas, O'Connor and Scalia were all driven by a flagrant party bias-clear grounds for their impeachment, as Vincent Bugliosi has so strongly argued, and yet somehow not worth even hinting at in Recount.

However, it is at the very end that Recount cops out most egregiously. The last shot is a great one: a grim Kubrickian view down a long corridor, with floor-to-ceiling shelves on either side, all loaded up with crates of ballots -- ballots that had not been counted at the time. And yet, of course, those ballots were counted eventually, by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, with the help of all the nation's leading media outlets; and what they ultimately found was that, by every standard, Al Gore won. Again: If all the ballots in the state of Florida were counted, Al Gore won -- a fact that goes unmentioned at that final moment, as that great shot fades to black without an epilogue.

That silence is especially perverse, considering the movie's heavy moral emphasis on the importance of our knowing, to a certainty, who won. Indeed, the movie's moral climax has Ron Klain, the story's hero (played beautifully by Kevin Spacey), blurt out his frustration in a hotel bar: "I just want to know who won this election!" That the film itself refuses to supply that information suggests either bad faith or crippling fear, or both.

And such refusal has made cowards of us all. If Recount had just tried, through cinematic means, to tell the truth about that stolen race, showing us what really happened (and what is still happening right now), and calling it by its true name, that movie would have done us all tremendous good, by digging up the buried horrors, dragging them into the light of day, and reassuring us that such enormous crimes will not be tolerated. In short, such a movie would encourage us to stand and fight for our democracy, and not sit back convinced that we've already lost.

UPDATE:

Among those posting comments on this piece are certain members of BushCo's faith-based community, who buy the myth that Bush 'won' Florida despite the overwhelming evidence that he did not -- evidence that most of them don't even mention here, typically deploying insult and derision rather than engaging with the facts.

As nasty as they are, however, I must thank them for their comments, which only reconfirm my argument: The reason why they can thus parrot the Big Lies about Bush/Cheney's 'win' is that the truth about that race has not been adequately publicized, either by the media, the Democratic Party or by Recount.

So here's a bit more evidence, in answer to those comments here insisting that Al Gore did not win Florida. This chart comes from the summary report on the findings of the Media Consortium that finally counted all the votes in Florida (all the votes, that is, that hadn't been pre-empted or destroyed). It was written by Dan Keating of the Washington Post, and is online here.

Mark Crispin Miller is the author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform, and, more recently, the editor of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008.
This book is a collection of 14 essays on election fraud and vote suppression by a range of experts--including pollster David W. Moore and political scientist Lance DeHaven-Smith, whose essays deal with different aspects of Bush/Cheney's "victory" in Florida. Updates on those essays, dealing with Recount, are now on-line at http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2008/06/does-recount-do-more-harm-than-good.html

Comments

[MarjorieG]

Fairness in voting is a small "d" democracy issue. Requiring support and passion on both sides of the aisle.

I have worked on election reform for years since 2000, and the push to electronics was deliberately started with bad paper by voting machine vendor Sequoia. Remember all the people, Bush included, saying we need computers during the recount. By 2002, we had legislation called HAVA, undermining our very act of voting with wholesale replacement to error prone and manipulated electronics. Citizens are removed from observance of the process. We can never again be as assured of the results.

Instead we got junk technology, never certified or tested, and even worse laws that don't require we recount and audit as best as possible. Machines that can't verify the voters intent, even if we had the public will.

[Eliz]

I, too, have been working with several national groups after the 2000 debacle, and was very disturbed by the HAVA mandate for touchscreen voting machines {DREs] that had no voter verified paper ballot to insure that the vote was correct. There was, and looks to continue to be, disenfranchisement of minorities and low income neighborhoods through caging, intimidation, and inadequate distribution of voting machines.

After the 2004 election, a group of citizens in Tennessee organized a national convention in Nashville April, 2005. Out of that came a film that has been shown nationwide to great acclaim. UNCOUNTED documents the events that led up to the coups that we are living under now.

We worked hard for 2 1/2 years and last Thursday the Governor signed into law the Voter Confidence Act of Tennessee that requires verified paper ballots and a mandated audit of all elections in Tennessee.

Getting this much reform is a good victory, but just a beginning. Now, it is up to us to get out and make sure our precincts are properly managed and that anyone who wants to have a paper vote can have one, and it will be counted. If we are to become a democracy, we will have to work for it and pay attention that the people we hire (vote in) to serve our interests, do.

[Bladernr1001]

Surprise, surprise......

We have a liberal professor, from a liberal college still trying to argue that the election was rigged.

Consider the source people. We are not looking at an unbiased assesment here. This is typical agenda driven tripe.

I am sure Mr. Miller would like me to be taxed at 80% of my income, my health care (and body) controlled by the state, mandated 3 months of paid vacation per year (so that our unemployment rate can be as high as France) and the abolishment of capitalism.

Take care commrad.

[AitchD]

What 'we' need is a critical mass of Republican voters who think that abstract concepts like Constitutional 'rights' are more important than homosexuality, abortion, and religion.

[Johnagain]

That's like asking for a critical mass of Republican voters who can use their frontal lobe to inform their decisions. Not gonna happen.

[kingofscotts]

Nice try Mark,

I am one of the many (but hardly a Bush fan, but again nice try) who has posted that you did not stick to the facts. We are all well aware of the results that you have finally posted as an update. Funny though that you left off one of the results.

You no doubt are aware that there were 9 scenarios and Bush won 5 of 9 and Gore 4 of 9. Funny how it was the scenarios that Gore was pushing for that had him losing.

Even when you try and pretend to offer full disclosure you just can't help tweaking the results.

Pathetic.

[fungeezer]

Having been a registered Republican who voted in Florida in 2000 and 2004, I can tell you that in both elections, there was vote fraud. I voted for Bush in 2000, Kerry in 2004 and switched parties after the 2004 election because of disgust.

Don't expect anything different in 2008. Even if they have paper trails, they have had plenty of time to caress the software to cover up their tracks. They need honest people to examine, in advance, during and after the elections what happens to the machines and software, nationwide.

[tj3]

I was a poll worker here in Jacksonville Florida during the "Recount" election of 2000.

In my county 22 thousand votes were thrown for some reason or other. It was nothing new, for decades Florida like other states has a sloppy and unfair system to count votes. Normally the contests are not so close so it did not matter to the eventual result.

Anyway.. my objection to the HBO movie was in one small point, emphasis. The Democrats working for Al Gore screwed up by not asking for a total recount of all votes in the state early on in the recount process.

This selective recount they asked for in places like Palm Beach gave Katherine Harris and team all they need to stall out the process.

Support swinging from Bush One to Bill Clinton to Bush W Two and Al Gore to Obama or McCAin is not really happening in a way. Apathy and disinterest is the background for all of it. The youth vote is staying home as are the elderly and everyone else. Our politics is about less and less. We have a politics of diminishing returns. That is why the vote tallys are so close and can be manipulated and jimmied and spun.

Why this is remains another subject?

Recount all you like.

[cam]

Agreed - the Dems made a huge mistake when they didn't insist on a statewide recount. I believe it was Lieberman who thought a limited count would prove more favorable and who motivated for it. After that it became difficult to expand the count. The Supreme Court's ruling for Bush was arbitary and undermined its constitutional legitimacy - it should have mandated a statewide recount as well as an investigation.

Gore has recently expressed the view that his administration would have been crippled by the right wing who would have seen their defeat as illegitimate. Perhaps there are times when a country is at the mercy of a militant minority, times when it is better to let them have the helm and find out where their course takes them.

[veracity]

Thanks for that, Mark. You, Bradblog, Greg Palast (& BBV) have been doing yeoman work on this issue that is at the core of American democracy.

Greg Palast states that a full 5 million, FVE MILLION legal (mostly Demoratic) votes were stolen and trashed in 2004, and that Democrats will have to overcome an 8 million, EIGHT MILLION vote fix in 2008. Given that Bush is credited with a 50 million vote tally in 2000 and 2004, that ups the ante for beating the GOP "fix" from 10% to almost 17% for 2008. (Currently, the first week of campaigning as the Democratic party nominee, Senator Obama commands a 4%-6% lead over McCain.)

In Florida, the disenfranchisement and vote-rigging efforts are systematic & relentless. One computer programmer even signed an affadavit, under oath, that then Florida state House Speaker Tom Feeney approached him to write and install vote switching software, software that could be installed by a simple flash memory device, software that would effortlessly switch predetermined number of votes from one candidate to another in predetermined districts; software that would dissolve itself (self delete) immediately after the first vote tallies were produced.

As recently as 2006 Democrat Christine Jennings (running for Katherine Harris' old seat in Florida 13) was probably robbed of her election win by 18,000 "undervotes" - in an off year, Congressional election! (Undervote tallies in similar districts was in the low 1,000 range.)
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/NEWS/611090343

[KnowMore]

Thank you, Mark, for doing it right. My own article, Re Recount: Remiss! posted at OpEdNews.com, was dashed out within hours of the first screening, notes that I had 3 criteria for the real story going in, and that the movie completely failed at two and partially failed at the third: First was who called it (Bush's cousin) - FAILED; second was the identity of rioters that stopped the count - HALF-FAILED; and third was the intentionally faulty Sequoia paper ballots - FAILED. To me, without those basic significant truths, the film only pretends to tell the story. So, the result is that we are now supposed to accept this depiction and move on.
As far as I'm concerned, if anything, this failure to include these well-documented parts of the story that make it clear that the election was STOLEN make it even more necessary for those of us who know better to raise our voices about this inaccurate disservice to the truth.
Again, Mark, thank you, and thank you for your newest book, Loser Take All -- required reading for informed voting.

[cafemocha]

None of this would have happened if we'd had already disposed of the abominable Electoral College!! And the THREE most compelling reasons to dump it are never, NEVER discussed:

1. It's French! That's right! This is the method "The French" use to elect the mayors in its 3 largest cities, Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles. Interestingly, in 2001 when one Paris mayoral candidate won the popular vote, another won the election due to having won more districts (arrondisements)!!

2. It sabotages (another French word? heh-heh) our attempt to choose the most effective Command In Chief by systematically under weighting votes in the high population TERROR TARGET RICH states of NY, California, etc. in favor of TERROR TARGET POOR states like Wyoming.

3. It automatically values the votes and thus the value of the lives of the voters of small target poor states (e.g, Wyoming) by as much as 4 times greater than the value of a voter living in the target rich states (New York, remember 9-11?, California...). So, attention soldier from Wyoming sharing the foxhole with soldier from New York: the lives of your familes back in Wyoming are worth 4 times as much in the eyes of The Constitution's Electoral College, that same Constitution you and your buddy are prepared to perhaps sacrifice your ONE and only life for.

It's long overdue for us to get rid of this archaic, "French" method of sabotaging our election of the Commander In Chief.

[torrrep]

If you knew anything about history you would understand why this was done. This was done so that the entire country would not be at the will of 3 or 4 states. This was done so that presidents represented more than just the will of a few highly populated areas. The electoral votes are determined by population so your vote counts just as much as everyone else. Your arrogance is astounding. What makes you think that only states with higher populations are capable of choosing an effective commander in chief? Bill Clinton did NOT win the popular vote in 1992. Does that mean he shouldn't have been President?

[Aramingo]

Your statement about Clinton is a little misleading. He did NOT win a majority of the popular vote in '92, but was the leading vote-getter amongst the three candidates with something like 43% of the vote. Dole had around 38%, Perot had something like 18%. By the rules of the game, Bill Clinton WON the popular vote in a three way race, and won big in the electoral college.

BTW: I agree with you about the electoral college; the concept goes back to the later days of the Roman Empire, where it was used by Visigoths, amongst others. It is not a French concept, and if it was, so what?

[Justis]

The electoral college wasn't implemented because it was more representative of the will of the people. It was implemented to prevent a direct popular vote and to make sure that Southern (read slavery) interests held power out of proportion to their actual population. Democracy had nothing to do with it.

[cafemocha]

Actually any student of history can see that small states, red, blue, or purple have already done a fine job MANY times in choosing the President. That"s not the point - though many New Yorkers have a solid argument against the choice imposed upon them in 2000 based upon the quality of defense he performed against the 9/11 terrorists.
The point is: No matter where you live or are registered to vote, your vote should count THE SAME. There is nothing "arrogant" about that at all. In fact, this is the essence of democracy: one person one vote, and that vote counts the same. There is also nothing about where you live that gives you more or less wisdom when voting. If so, we should of course all move to this state of superior wisdom!

If this "Big State vs. Small State dominance" argument were extended further into other levels of government by region, we"d find counties within states doing the same thing to prevent "the dominance" of highly populated counties in choosing the governor, ¦and further on down to the mayor.

As someone who has relocated from a "small state" to a "big state", I have yet to hear of any convincing arguments as to why my vote must now count for less simply because of the state where I live.

It ought to be "One equal person one equal vote from sea to shining sea."

[UltraClassic]

Drill Here, Drill Now, or shut up and pay up.

Sounds to me like you are getting ready to gin up another excuse if Saint Obama does not win. You need to get over the fact that Gore lost the 2000 election. Do like the other far left democrats and "MoveOn"

Drill Here, Drill Now, or shut up and pay up.

[FearlessFreep]

UltraClassic, did you even read Miller's article?

[nikto]

Rightwingers don't actually read much----They mostly bloviate.

It's how they relieve their gas pains---Their large intestines lead directly to their brains.

Rightwingers--YES, they are different from Humans.

[Zenith1959]

Are you ignoring the line in the article that states when after the election was over and all the votes were finally counted Al Gore had more votes and would have won. Are you ignoring that Gore got 600,000 more votes nation wide than Bush? I guess those are just inconvenient truths.

[Bladernr1001]

But that is not how it works per the constitution. It is the electoral college that actually determines the winner. That is the rules plain and simple. A mismatch the electoral college and the popular vote has occured a couple other times in the country's history.

There were several recounts conducted by media outlets such as the Miami Herald. Depending on what rules they applied Bush won some and Gore won some.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000,_in_Florida#Post-electoral_studies.2Frecounts

I am sure if the count went Gore's way you would have a different opinion. That is what this comes down to. Everyone spins this for "their guy". Drop it already.

[ricchase]

Yes. You are very correct, Mr. Crispin. And HBO does not deserve any accolades for it's misleading presentation. In fact, it should be castigated. The shame is that the millions of people that saw the movie are under the impression that the Bush team won through gamesmanship and cunning. When in fact it was outright theft, Top to bottom.

[Bladernr1001]

Come on....... everybody had their team on lawyers using every trick in the book. The movie clearly depicted that. This was destined for the supreme court no matter what the outcome.

Where is your supporting info?

[Diana]

I was shocked at how the progressive community praised this movie. I was appalled precisely for some of the same reasons you've illustrated, Mr. Miller. I thought the avuncular portrayal of baker, in particular, was outrageous.

But I was mostly appalled by the movie's use of the propagandists' ploy. When their make-believe arguments don't work, they simply claim, 'BOTH parties do it! ALL politicians are the same, don't you know,' which instantly seems to neutralize any and all disagreements. It's an all-purpose ploy. It works just as well whether the topic is violation of human rights or the number of vacation days bush has taken; and it almost works equally well on dittoheads and smart and decent people who simply don't have the time to spend on keeping up with the news.

[MrsWakely]

Just an aside (as a Gore and Kerry supporter, respectively, who suffers every day of Bush), when the media/pundits, recently surmised that Obama needed, like JFK did, to "go to West Virginia, and some other rural white states, and press the flesh, let them see him, get to know him, dispel the doubts about him being too liberal, a catholic," etc., my dad, 78, said to me, "it's as if nobody remembers that the main reason JFK won in those states, and, the election, barely, over Nixon, was that his father, Joe Kennedy, got Sam Giancana, head of the mob in Chicago, to put out the word to the unions, who were in the mob's pocket, that they were to vote for JFK, NOT Nixon. Democrats are just as capable as Republicans of stealing elections. Don't kid yourself. Having said that - GO OBAMA!

[GrainOSand]

Theft by the rich, powerful, and politically connected, is an acceptable crime to America. Any questions?

[Bladernr1001]

Oh you mean, rich lawyers, the teamsters, NEA, Hollywood celebs?

[ZaxDad]

When I say vigilant, I mean vigilant in terms of the voting process and in terms of my individual vote. Earlier this evening, I was driving home with my son during a thunderstorm, which is a daily occurrence in Florida in the summer time. The power was out in my neighborhood, and all the traffic lights were out. We all know that when the traffic lights are out, you treat the intersection as a four-way stop. At every intersection " and we went through six " at least one driver drove through oblivious to the "rules." At four intersections, the errant driver was talking on his or her cell phone. My vigilance prevented an accident, despite the "rules." Had there been an accident, I'm sure witnesses would be there for me, but the point is even though I may be in the right, I still lose. My best bet is to be hyper aware... look twice and look twice again. If the power keeps going out and the roads become dangerous, vigilance demands I take further action... organize my neighbors, petition those who can do something about it and more.

[RichLiberal]

The fact is that the country is run by power politics - i.e. there are power centers and actors from those centers that control the course of the elections.

In Florida, the powers in 2000 had decided ahead of time that Bush was going to win, and it was just a matter of railroading the final result thru.

As the author of this piece has already shown, there were many ways that the Florida vote could have swung to Gore, but no matter what happened there was always a power factor to shut down any recourse. The A-A disenfranchisement alone w thousands of legitimate voters turned away from the polls was reason enough for the Feds to come in, lock everything down, and determine what really happened. This didn't happen. It didn't happen in Ohio either in 2004.

The latest show of this power brokering was in the Dem Primary where the Dem Leadership had pre-picked Obama as the winner and tilted the table at every turn to ensure he got the victory.

I agree w the author that "Recount" whitewashed the whole thing. That's the point. The power centers want to control the results and will have their way whenever the vote is close and they can manipulate the situation.