'Recount' Proves Democrats Tried To Steal The Election
By Chris Jones Posted in Hollywood — Comments (27) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I just finished watching "Recount" starring Kevin Spacey that the far-left has been promoting all week. To be honest, I was very surprised how the movie turned out. I figured it would be 90 minutes of red meat for the far-left crowd who still suffer sleepless nights thinking about how Bush "stole" the election in 2000.
Cosmetically the film turned out as I anticipated it would. Democrats were depicted as righteous crusaders who only wanted to do the right thing and make every vote count. Republicans on the other hand led by former Secretary of State James Baker were meant to be depicted as political thugs who used a combination of dirty tricks and favors to get George W. Bush elected.
I emphasize meant because Republicans didn't come off in the film that way at all. Besides Katherine Harris who was made to look extra foolish in the movie (only extra), everyone else came of looking pretty cool. Republicans looked like the cool customers while the Democrats looked frantic and shrill (like they do now).
What really surprised me about the film was the overall message it conveyed. What "Recount" actually succeeded in doing was totally smashing the far-left's narrative over the last eight years that Bush "stole" the election.
The Gore camp was depicted in the movie as trying to get a recount in certain Florida counties because those counties were mostly poor minorities who "tend to vote for Democrats." Throughout the movie Democrats shamelessly used Jessie Jackson to try and get blacks riled up about allegedly being disenfranchised.
The Gore camp purposely tried to swing the vote in Gore's favor by manipulating poor minorities and fabricating stories of disenfranchisement and crying about dimpled chads.
The movie portrayed Republicans as merely following the law to its conclusion. The Bush camp won because of the excellent legal work by James Baker, as well as a little good old fashioned luck. It was mostly luck that kept the (win at all costs) Gore camp from doing everything short of orchestrating a kidnapping to get Gore a few hundred more votes.
The 2000 election certainly was a debacle and served to expose very serious flaws in our nation's voting system. In my opinion if your too old, too blind, or too stupid, to punch the right hole on your ballot you probably shouldn't be voting.
That said, voting is not rocket science and we trust computers to store medical records and classified intelligence. We just successfully landed a new spacecraft on Mars to test soil samples, and our military is the most technologically advanced fighting force the world has ever seen.
All this and the United States of America really cannot design a voting system that everyone can use?
We can fire a cruise missile half-way around the world and into an open window, or drop a GPS guided bomb through an air shaft on a building, but we still can't create a voting system that's accurate 99.99% percent of the time?
Maybe the Google guys should start work on "Google Voting" for their next project.
You know they could do it.
-Chris Jones
Recounts of Florida after the SCOTUS decision showed that Bush won, fair and square. The rest is conspiracy theory drivel.
The problem with computer voting is that it still comes down to how effectively your controls are implemented. With a physical medium, you remove a whole slew of ways to tamper with the results.
That we trust computers with medical records is a non sequitur. People die in hospitals with electronic records -- is that what you want for the country? (Yes, that was purposefully fallacious.)
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.
he was contesting that the selective recount would have shown Gore to win, just that the Dems were trying to make it work out that way.
You are very right on computer voting. I believe there are very good ways to use computers/technology to help, but to have verifiable controls. For instance, I used to vote via the standardized test fill in the bubble type ballots. So those were inserted into the scanner. So you get computer counts with an audit trail to make sure that the correct number of ballots were cast. They can be rescanned or can be manually counted.
There are other methods as well that could be used.
At the same time, I think back to the method that I used for many elections: the big, manual voting machine (that had gears and counters behind the big lever that closed and opened the curtains). They had no physical medium. But we were not particularly nervous about them.
Diebold had their system written in Access with no journal for gods sake. If you wanted a recount all they would do is re sum the columns. While I don't think there was any fraud* Diebold sure as could did nothing to inspire that confidence and even less to reassure after questions were raised.
*Simply put anyone that would build election machines that way is too incompetent to successfully rig an election.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
----------------------------------------------------
"That's funny, because I can see him eating her liver with some falafel and a nice hot tea." - kyle8
the day after the Sopranos finale, and haven't missed it a bit.
But I may have to pick up Showtime- I keep seeing the embedded ad for The Tudors, it looks pretty hot.
You say that Republicans were "meant" to be portrayed as thugs, but instead came off appearing kinda cool.
Isn't it possible that you perceived these characters as they were meant to be portrayed?
It was mostly luck that kept the (win at all costs) Gore camp from doing everything short of orchestrating a kidnapping to get Gore a few hundred more votes.
Watch what you say! Obama had an aunt who was kidnapped by Florida Republicans to stop her from demanding a recount in Palm Beach County.
John
----------
Why would God invent something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
that if only a bit improved on could work this year.
It certainly worked in Washington state.
Unfair. Unbalanced. Unmedicated. -- IMAO
Did they include the bit about throwing out thousands of overseas military ballots (est. 80% R votes) in FL because overseas military mail doesn't include a postmaster date stamp? Because that was a footnote in the news at the time, and it should have been 1st page. In my humble opinion, anyone who thinks our votes don't count (Washington state did the same thing to my ballot sent from Iraq in 2004) can defend themselves. I say we round them up, send them to a war zone, and leave them to it.
I don't know anything about this other than what I saw last night but this is pretty much how its described.
Dem Strategist files complaint that many military ballots cant be proven to have the stamp, and the substitute witness signature that could be used if there was no stamp was available.
Rep strategists protest disenfranchisement of military soldiers
Joe Lieberman is shown on Meet the Press answering a question on the military ballots and responding that they should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Dem Strategists groan, curse lieberman
In hearing Rep strategists are heard arguing that even the VP nominee on the other side wants to validate those military ballots
Judge is seen crossing out rejection notes on ballots and writing that they are acceptable.
Dem in Dem strategy room shown to increase a whiteboard tally of # of votes Bush was ahead by. Main Dem strategist says "Thanks Joe Lieberman" very sarcastically
The party that actively worked to prevent military voters from getting the benefit of the doubt
Joe Lieberman is shown on Meet the Press answering a question on the military ballots and responding that they should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Dem Strategists groan, curse lieberman
...
Main Dem strategist says "Thanks Joe Lieberman" very sarcastically
But hey...they support the troops!
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
This article got it exactly right. It was Gore's team that tried to "steal the election." Gore's team didn't want to count or "recount" all of the votes in Florida. They only wanted a "recount" in specific counties where they thought they could pick up additional votes, thus creating the Equal Protection problem that ultimately lead to their defeat before SCOTUS.
Gore offers to accept manual recounts as final, meet Bush
Gore then said, should his opponent, Republican George W. Bush prefer, a full recount of all Florida counties could be conducted. He then offered somewhat of an olive branch to the Bush camp, offering to meet with the Texas governor twice -- once before the completion of the vote count, and again afterward.
Gore did want only a selective (and creative) recount. His backup plan if that failed was to try for anything else that involved recounting of anything - he had nothing to lose if his Plan A failed.
I don't know how this movie pictured it, but I seem to recall reading about Bush lawyers high-fiving each other when they got military votes tossed while Gore and company were out bleating about needing to count all the votes.
which was only one week into the process.
It's clear from the quote that Gore was open to a "full recount of all Florida counties" if Bush also wanted it. The Gore campaign also suggested --this comes up in the movie-- that the Bush campaign should feel free to request manual recounts where ever they wanted.
Furthermore, FL election law did not have a provision for a candidate to request a statewide manual recount, i.e. only county-by-county requests could be filed. Bush and Gore joining hands to request recounts in all of the counties was essentially the only way --other than the Florida supreme court ordering one-- to get a full state recount going under the circumstances.
In an election whose result was as close as Florida was in 2000, either we should have had a statewide runoff vote (between Gore and Bush) or we ought to have tried to count every vote where the intent of the voter was clear enough. Such approaches would meet the standards we generally expect of democracies in other countries.
The Bush campaign didn't take up either of the suggestions made by the Gore camp. They can't then take the high road and complain that Gore was being selective; the 11/15/2000 quote above proves that he wasn't.
Gore's goal was to have a recount only where he thought it would help him. That was his right to try to do so, but he shouldn't have acted like he was being honest about the whole thing. He was throwing down the gauntlet to Bush and trying to cover all his bases. It seems to me he was saying, "If I get my recounts only, I'm going to win and you're screwed; what's your move." He was trying to set it up to where:
- That's exactly what would happen, OR
- He would draw Bush into this cat and mouse game and take his chances.
The only outcome he had to avoid at all costs was taking the original result, because it showed him as the loser.
Let me put it this way... Couldn't Gore have requested a recount in every county? Of course he could have, but that's not what he wanted. Instead Bush played it smart (as it turns out) and refused to play Gore's game. Bush could have carried it to extremes and gone after recounts in Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Mexico. If he lost Florida and gained those three that were decided by less than half a point, he still wins. Heck, maybe he should have included Oregon in case he could have swung it instead of Iowa or New Mexico.
"Couldn't Gore have requested a recount in every county?"
He could have. But, first, any or some of those counties could or may have denied his requests because sufficient cause would've been required in those counties separately which is harder to demonstrate in a piece meal fashion. And he would have probably had 67 separate legal contests from the Bush camp to deal with, a logistical nightmare which it isn't clear Gore's camp had the resources to deal with.
A sufficient cause existed at the state level in the sense that in order to ensure that the winner-take-all result was reflective of what the voters of the state collectively intended, but the arcane FL law didn't allow for requesting a statewide manual recount.
Had Bush accepted Gore's invitation to have all counties recounted manually, there would not have been legal contests and the counties would have been compelled to grant the requests. That's my argument.
though I don't think for a moment that lack of legal resources was a problem for Gore. Logitics, certainly; lack of lawyers, no way.
The notion that manual recounts are more accurate is composed of feathers from horses. Human beings can't reliably count the number of times the letter 'f' appears in a single sentence. The only thing a manual recount would have accomplished would have been to substitute whatever error was in the automated count with a larger error of indeterminate bias. For Gore, putting a random number of indeterminate size where the vote count used to be was a superior result to the one where he lost for sure. But it is hardly an improvement, or more fair, or anything but a cynical ploy.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
See, as I recall, when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount, Gore's camp fought against it. So, yes. The Bush camp Can take the high road and claim Gore was being selective.
Of course, as we found out after the fact, when the NYT and Newsweek and company all went down and manually recounted the entire state, Gore lost. And would have lost even worse but for the tens of thousands of military votes he managed to get tossed...
"Always be honest with yourself. Even if you are honest with no one else."
--me
At a rate of 6,000 earmarks per spending bill, Speaker Pelosi is selling America's future to the special intrest groups.
Thanks for the review. I may watch the movie someday, which I wouldn't have done before.
Democrats: Abandoning Allies, One Country at a Time.
Recounts wouldn't have mattered even if Gore had won. While the Florida Supremes were fighting with each other and getting slapped down by the SCOTUS, the Florida legislature had it out and voted to give Bush the win. Which, incidentally, is how Florida had their election laws designed in case of a contested election...
So, even if Gore had won, he still lost.
"Always be honest with yourself. Even if you are honest with no one else."
--me
Perhaps I can apply for a federal subsidy to pay for my HBO. As long as I promise to eat sugar and corn while I watch (soda and popcorn?).
Your analysis mirrored a little of what I saw on Hannity and Colmes - the Hannity stand-in took Spacey to task a little on the caricature of Harris.
If the story is told right, then it is told from our viewpoint: Gore initiated the litigation, and Bush won the vote fair and square. Those 2 key points don't seem to get attention in the TalkingPoints.
On CSPAN's Q&A show Scalia was interviewed and he made pithy comments on the whole matter, which were naturally brilliant. (I found it on iTunes...)