Recount

“Recount”, the HBO movie about the Florida presidential election fiasco of 2000, was good television: well made, well cast, and well acted (with an especially vivid, albeit cruel, portrayal of Katherine Harris by Laura Dern). Highly watchable.

Much as I enjoyed it, the predictable, inevitable, anti-Republican bias did become a little wearing. The movie encouraged you to think that for the Democrats it was all a matter of “counting every vote”—and who but a villain could object to that? Also, of course, you were invited to think that so long as this had been done Gore would have won. But this is still unclear, is it not? (Don’t answer that.) The treatment of the Florida Supreme Court’s pro-Gore decisions (wise, bold, disinterested) and the subsequent pro-Bush rulings of the Supreme Court (politically motivated, indefensible) was also tendentious and misleading. Two columns by Stuart Taylor (here and here) helped me refresh my memory of that aspect of the matter.

ABC’s Jake Tapper, who was a consultant on the film, notes that its “emotional core…makes it, probably, lean a little left. Not intellectually, but emotionally.” Oh sure. Probably, just a little, but not intellectually. (The title of Tapper’s book on the episode, which the film draws on, conveys its scrupulous intellectual detachment: “Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency”.)

Mainly, though, as I watched I was thinking, “only in America”. Much as I admire this country, could anywhere else take something so simple and make it so complicated and controversial? I mean, a full-scale constitutional crisis, arising out of an inability to count votes? Imagine, if you can stay awake while doing so, a movie about a close result in a British election. In my own land, a recount in a close vote means counting the ballots (crosses on slips of paper) once or twice more: it takes a few hours, and it’s over. In the meantime, there is little to see, though I’m sure many of the vote-counters have fascinating inner lives. However you look at it, thin material for lawyers or scriptwriters.

But the great thing is, the United States learns from its mistakes. Eight years on there is no chance of a candidate accusing another of suppressing votes to steal an election. Least of all in Florida.

Comments

Jake Tapper is a total idiot. Have you seen his blog posts? Inane. And I thought Recount sucked. And frankly, even though I'm a liberal, and inclined to think the worst of Bush and the Republicans, and to question their integrity and believe in their corruption, Recount was not convincing. It was so obviously biased, and I don't think the democrats came off any better than the Republicans.

Whatever did happen to the black voter suppression, though? That I'd like to know.

Posted by cnnr | May 27, 2008 9:39 AM

Tapper's book is about both sides trying to steal the election. You should know what you talk about before you criticize, though obviously this is your M.O.

Posted by Oregano | May 27, 2008 10:33 AM

Vote-suppression is alive and well, embedded in an emerging police-state with what is now a nationally credit-scored version of the original, Jim Crow, "property-qualified franchise". Texas is actually the leader in this, with the lowest political participation rate in the nation and one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.

The fact that both parties in Texas, as in Florida, are complicit in our discriminatory voting process is fundamentally attributable to (a) our "all volunteer" (British) military institutions which de-couple suffrage from any sort of Roman-Swiss militia and (b) the debt-driven nature of our government at all echelons. The legal jargon and technicalities just disguise the fact that both parties seek to control campaigns and patronage, not to be controlled by elections and voters.

And, both parties are now largely devoid of their traditional (nineteenth century) military and civic foundations. They are more "inclusive", they say, but less popular or functional, now monetizing and professionalizing campaigns by targeting specialized constituencies and channelizing political messages for discreet market segments.

The discrimination is more effective and less subject to legal remedy than previously because it is economic and data-driven, not overtly racist. Our life-peers, the Law Lords, love it. This is what the Federalists always wanted, "from day one".

The hapless, clueless Democrats -- epitomized by Warren Christopher in recount -- are a mystery to me, an old Democratic Ward Heeler and the senior Poll Watcher in Harris County.

Posted by John Robert BEHRMAN | May 27, 2008 10:35 AM

"Imagine, if you can stay awake while doing so, a movie about a close result in a British election. In my own land, a recount in a close vote means counting the ballots (crosses on slips of paper) once or twice more: it takes a few hours, and it’s over."

I'm sure there's an Ealing-style comedy (if not necessarily a good one) in the case of Mark Oaten and Gerry Malone in 1997. You remember: incumbent loses by two votes, has High Court invalidate result on grounds of papers being counted despite improper stamping; loses subsequent by-election by an easier-to-measure 21,000 or so.

Posted by Jasper Milvain | May 27, 2008 2:05 PM

It is funny ... and impressive!

Being the senior "invigilator" in the third largest county in the nation, I did watch returns on the BBC from the last really big national election -- the one that sealed Tony Blair's fate w/out forcing Her Majesty to replace him immediately. Actually, I watched the movie, The Queen, too, about that time.

For people with no constitution to look up on Google, I was struck by how the integrity and fairness of the election relative to principles, such as they are, of parliamentary democracy in, at least a vestige of absolute monarchy. Now, that has some tragedy/comedy potential right there.

Just as, I think, an MP or two is held hostage in the Royal Precincts while ER2 reads The Speech in Parliament, it is clear that all the MPs -- who otherwise are parliamentary absolutists -- are nearly gagged and bound to stand their while their fate and that of some spoiled ballots is read off on the BBC by a local dignitary in a costume of sorts. In fact, some of the candidates seem to be dressed up wierdly, too.

The counting hall is all decorated and filled with mere citizens without the least bit of sovereignty but plenty of power for at least that one day. They did not overturn The Government, but they did deliver quite a punch to Labour and the Tories, if I recall, a couple of "independent" Labour candidates kicking some major butt in their own party corner.

What I really enjoyed, besides the BBC outdoing the production values of its competition, -- the BBC in the last election -- was the parties' Lords on the air, not ignored as usual, also not powerless, even Lordly, for a day: mocking their own party's leaders usually with the great wit they must cultivate in that teapot they live in on every other day.

On a serious note: our lawyerized, bureaucratized and complex elections bear no resemblence to our own constitutions, for instance, the one we have in Texas: It provides for actual ballots, popular sovereignty, and universal suffrage only to have statutes and court rulings do a good job of turning that inside out and upside down, preserving Jim Crow and, also, making lords of the likes of Jim Baker.

Our elections are mostly about perpetuating incombents, otherwise something for lawyers to bid for patronage and clients in. The ballots are gone, replaced by an electronic tally. Maybe, the voters can be replaced, too. Then the elections would be what lawyers would call "perfect" -- a mere formality, symbolic ratification of a negotiated agreement -- sort of like what Warren Christopher proposed.

Posted by John Robert BEHRMAN | May 27, 2008 5:05 PM

Stuart Taylor? you are treating Stuart Taylor as a source for a legal discussion of bush v. gore? surely you frickin' jest, clive: not stuart taylor.

you really only need to know one thing about the supreme court decision in bush v. gore: it was so poorly thought through that the court itself noted its non-precedent value, a completely meaningless term in this context.

stuart taylor, i mean, really: you asked us not to get into the various recount scenarios, so we won't, but the notion that stuart taylor is some kind of legitimate source here and not writing as an apparatchik: it's just shocking. i had thought better of our host.

Posted by howard | May 28, 2008 7:20 PM

In the military, they have a word for what happened with the voting in Florida in 2000: FUBAR.

Unsurprisingly, no one came out of that fiasco looking great -- except maybe James Baker, who at least made the most of his opportunities. In that light, I thought "Recount" clicked. Emotionally, the story sympathized with the Democrats, who played the chump role, but the plot showed the mastery of the GOP operatives who won the day.

History will show that's a broad but fair assessment, I predict. After all, Katherine Harris played a decisive role in what happened, and subsequently proved to be a complete nutjob -- as she is shown in the film.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9356374

Posted by Kit Stolz | May 29, 2008 11:29 AM

Clive,

I commend you for your diligence in watching Recount. I'd rather suffer through "Sex and the City," and that's a fate worse than reading a Maureen Dowd column.

As for voting qualifications, if it were up to me, I'd limit the franchise to those who had taken at least a year of college calculus. That seems to me to be a pretty good proxy for a basic understanding of science, which is essential if you are going to vote in an informed manner on such issues as climate change and energy policy. Although this type of franchise restriction would probably benefit Obama, with his base in the professional class, it would have the salutary benefit of disenfranchising most political reporters, whose ignorance of scientific matters is scandalous.

Posted by DBL | May 29, 2008 3:21 PM

"Count all the Votes" - no, just count them in 3-4 counties to tip the election back to your side. That is what the Dems tried to do and Hollywood cannot glamorize that, ever.

And "black voter suppression" ? does that mean stopping blacks from voting 3 times, or stopping convicts and illegal aliens from voting? We need more, not less,of that.

Posted by Josef | May 31, 2008 8:29 AM

"the subsequent pro-Bush rulings of the Supreme Court (politically motivated, indefensible) was also tendentious and misleading."

Misleading perhaps only because the show did not make the simple point that the USSC has NO CONSTITUTIONAL ROLE in any state recount of electoral ballots. PERIOD. This task is specifically charged to the Congress in the 12th Amendment:

"The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

Any dispute over the Electors presented before the Senate can only be resolved by the House. If two slates of Electors had been presented for Florida, such as the one approved by the FL Legislature and the one resulting from the ABORTED recount, then the House, then under Republican control, should have been forced to go on record as politically preferring Bush.

That would have been the Constitutional solution.

You can argue that the result would have been the same. I would say that the difference would have been Accountabilty, lack of which has been the whole sad story of this "administration".

Posted by pbh | June 11, 2008 3:53 PM

"just count them in 3-4 counties to tip the election back to your side. That is what the Dems tried to do and Hollywood cannot glamorize that, ever."

Josef, I guess you missed the part of the show that explained that FL State election law ONLY permitted recount requests on a county by county basis. Which means that each county had to be individually requested to perform recounts.

Of the counties that used punchcard ballots, four of them were among the most populous and those four reported the highest number of rejected ballots. Were those also the most traditionally Democtratic? Yeah. And so?

If you are really so concerned that the Gore people tried to cheat by only counting "favorable" ballots, what was your position on the Statewide recount declared by the FSSC? Time had run out? And why is that? Are votes somehow time stamped to expire?

Is that why the same court allowed the counting of votes cast after the election by military personnel despite FL State law prohibiting such a practice?

Posted by pbh | June 11, 2008 4:06 PM