aquapub

HBO has put out a Hollywood revision of Gore's attempt to steal Election 2000 (Recount) that buries key facts and portrays conservatives as ruthlessly maneuvering against innocent truth-seeking Democrats who were simply trying to figure out who won.

1) Katherine Harris pushed for a statewide recount. This was completely omitted so HBO could misrepresent Republicans as trying to suppress the vote while Democrats innocently tried to count them. Gore's people fought tooth and nail against letting all the votes get counted, insisting that only votes from the four most liberal counties in the state get re-examined (repeatedly, until Gore could manufacture a win for himself). HBO at least bothered to show the fact that Gore was pressing for only those counties, but still somehow managed to make it look like an honest attempt to get to the truth.

2) Every single person portrayed in the film was consulted about the script and how they were represented long before it was made-except Katherine Harris, who actually made attempts to preview her portrayal, but HBO would never talk to her. They ended up releasing the film without getting one iota of input from her, and overtly smeared her as some bizarrely unstable, meandering religious zealot randomly quoting the Bible and taking all her cues from a Bush strong man sent to keep the loon in line.

All the facts and witnesses from her office during that time show this portrayal to be an outrageous slander.

3) If the media recount had confirmed that Gore won, HBO would have certainly included some mention of it at the end, being that this film was an attempt to cast Gore's near theft of the election as Gore getting robbed by hardball Republicans. But since the media recounts confirmed that Bush won by an even greater margin when done the way Gore was asking for, it was omitted entirely.

4) HBO fails to even mention the thousands and thousands of votes Bush lost by the media (despite receiving written requests from Katherine Harris ahead of time not to do this) falsely declaring Gore the winner while the rigidly conservative panhandle still had more than an hour left. There was a huge drop in conservative turn out because of the media's willful activism on Gore's part, but none of this was even mentioned, while HBO twisted other facts to make Gore look like he had been deprived of thousands of legitimate votes, until the end, and even then, it was mentioned not as royal screwing that it was, but as a shrugged off "guess we'll never know how those votes would've gone" type of dismissal.

Incidentally, the media called states that went for Gore by extremely narrow margins (and at least one state that actually went for Bush-Florida) immediately, while delaying calls for states like Alabama that went right away for Bush by double-digits for hours and hours. Their own internal data showed Bush ahead when the media called Florida for Gore.

5) Every Republican course of action is portrayed as a calculated strategy to win, regardless of the Truth, despite them having the facts and the law on their side at every turn, while Democrats were consistently portrayed as fair-minded truth-seekers as they lied, cheated and attempted to steal the election.

6) HBO showed only the parts of the voter purge list controversy that made Michael Moore's hysterical race-baiting conspiracy theory look accurate. In 1998, the Florida courts overturned an election because convicted felons had been allowed to vote, contrary to Florida law.

As David Kopel points out from the Palm Beach Post:

"The Florida legislature ordered the executive branch to purge felons from the voting rolls before the next election. Following instructions from Florida officials, Data Base Technologies (DBT) aggressively attempted to identify all convicted felons who were illegally registered to vote in Florida.

There were two major problems with the purge. First, several states allow felons to vote once they have completed their sentences. Some of these ex-felons moved to Florida and were, according to a court decision, eligible to vote. Florida improperly purged these immigrant felons.

Second, the comprehensive effort to identify all convicted felons led to a large number of false positives, in which persons with, for example, the same name as a convicted felon, were improperly purged. Purged voters were, in most cases, notified months before the election and given an opportunity to appeal, but the necessity to file an appeal was in itself a barrier which probably discouraged some legitimate, non-felon citizens from voting. According to the Palm Beach Post, at least 1,100 people were improperly purged.

The overbreadth of the purge was well-known in Florida before the election. As a result, election officials in 20 of Florida's counties ignored the purge list entirely. In these counties, convicted felons were allowed to vote. Also according to the Post, thousands of felons were improperly allowed to vote in the 20 non-purging counties. Analysis by Abigail Thernstrom and Russell G. Redenbaugh, dissenting from a report by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, suggests that about 5,600 felons voted illegally in Florida. (The Thernstrom/Redenbaugh dissent explains why little credit should be given to the majority report, which was produced by flagrantly ignoring data.)

When allowed to vote, felons vote approximately 69 percent Democratic, according to a study in the American Sociological Review. Therefore, if the thousands of felons in the non-purging 20 counties had not been illegally allowed to vote, it is likely that Bush's statewide margin would have been substantially larger.

Regardless, Moore's suggestion that the purge was conducted on the basis of race was indisputably false. As the Palm Beach Post details, all the evidence shows that Data Base Technologies did not use race as a basis for the purge. Indeed, DBT's refusal to take note of a registered voter's race was one of the reasons for the many cases of mistaken identity.

DBT's computers had matched these people with felons, though in dozens of cases they did not share the same name, birthdate, gender or race...[A] review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted. Records show that DBT told the state it would not use race as a criterion to identify felons. The list itself bears that out: More than 1,000 voters were matched with felons though they were of different races.

The appeals record supports the Palm Beach Post's findings. Based on the numbers of successful appeals, blacks were less likely to have been improperly placed on the purge list: of the blacks who were purged, 5.1 percent successfully appealed. Of Hispanics purged, 8.7 percent successfully appealed. Of whites purged, 9.9 percent successfully appealed. John R. Lott, Jr., "Nonvoted Ballots and Discrimination in Florida," Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 32 (Jan. 2003), p. 209. Of course it is theoretically possible that the appeals officials discriminated against blacks, or that improperly purged blacks were not as likely to appeal as were people of other races. But no one has offered any evidence to support such possibilities."

In other words, this "controversy" was an example of Democrats receiving thousands of votes they weren't supposed to get, yet it was falsely portrayed as a deliberate Republican suppression of black votes.

In short, this film was another typical Hollywood assault on the truth and an example of why the left's complete inability to correctly depict historical events should raise concerns about their stranglehold on our educational system.

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DarkWizard12

Give it to the democrats to be able to hold a grudge for 8 years....

aquapub

Over being denied the ability to steal another election, no less.

Zyphlin

A dramatic re-enactment that is put across as obviously not being fully factual dealing with a partisan issue.

They're as dirty as the "path to 9/11" people for taking something and completely skewing things not based on facts to steer it to their political agenda.

They're as free and fine to do this as the people who did the other one.

What I want to see is all the liberals that were BLASTING that one for its "blatant political bias" and trying to "misrepresent facts" to come out and say this one is ALSO just as bad

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John1234

Well look what they have to hold a grudge on.
Bush was a total disaster for our Nation.
Looking back, are you actually still pleased that Gore lost?

I will remember Bush's terms as the darkest and most embarrassing time in my Nation's history.

If Gore had won...

The religious right would not have gained control over the Republican Party.
This control would never have been transformed into Neo Con War Mongers.
Conservatives would still control the Republican Party.

Iraq would have been averted.
And Gore would have strengthened our International ties to the point that problems like Iran are easily dispatched.

Gore would likely have lost his second term because the 4th term by one party is usually lost.
Conservatives would be in control right now.
Not Neo Cons or Liberals.
Afghanistan would be over.
The economy would be booming.

GO Bush!

aquapub

Unlike the 9/11 documentary though, the outrages here are substantive and central to the viewer verdict. Democrat incompetence and spinelessness really did set 9/11 in motion and make it inevitable.

aquapub

Translation: Bush's dastardly willingness to fight back against terrorists makes it ok that Democrats still can't let go of an election they failed to steal almost a decade ago.

DarkWizard12

I don;t even have to read anymore, that shows your claim is baseless. I just want people to get over it. Its 8 years ago. Bush was a disastor, but guess what? WE CAN'T CHANGE IT!! I know, I know, reality is harsh, but it is NOT about which president is best, its about which president got the votes and Bush got the votes. Sorry +(

Redress

OH NOZ! A movie that is not factually accurate! Holy cow, we have never seen anything like that before....

aquapub

The "religious right" is a trumped up straw man peddled by liberals to justify their war on Christianity. The left's al Qaida mess still would have screwed us on 9/11, so the Neo Cons, made up of former liberals and conservatives aggressively positioned against terrorism NOT for religious reasons, but for national security ones, still would have become a powerful influence in the party.

And contrary to the persistent smears of the terror-apologist left, fighting back is not being a warmonger...just ask the Democrats who got us into nearly every war we've been in for the last hundred years.

So terror-sponsors with a history of using WMD to commit mass murder would still be making a laughing stock out of the US and the UN in a post-9/11 world...only a liberal could keep a straight face while misrepresenting this as an improvement.

Our "allies," who have been using diplomacy on Iran for years now-with zero results-would not have been able to appease and embolden the regime Democrats installed in Iran any more easily with President Gore pandering for France's approval at the expense of America's national interests.

Actually he would have lost in 2004 because there would have been no way for Democrats to cloud the issue that they caused 9/11.

The amount of troops we have in Iraq is a small fraction of our overall force. This notion that Bin Laden would have been caught if we hadn't sent troops to Afghanistan is a BS smokescreen.

Besides, judging by the left's smearing of that war as a quagmire and comparing it to Vietnam 3 whole weeks in, I'm not sure someone as far left as President Gore wouldn't have argued that fighting back would simply play into enemy hands and therefore do absolutely nothing as the administration he worked for had done for years...and with the number of times Democrats actually had Bin Laden in their sites and still refused to do anything about him, I can't imagine he'd actually lift a finger to bring him in if we had located him.

Newsflash: If Gore were in office, the economy would have never recovered from the left's al Qaida mess when 9/11 still happened (because he would not have responded to the economic free fall by cutting taxes and turning things around). Similarly, Katrina still would have happened (and their wouldn't be a Republican in office to blame for Democrat incompetence), corporate scandals still would have happened, the gas prices caused by Democrats would be even higher (from those gas tax hikes they still advocate to this day), frivolous lawsuits (protected by Democrats) would still be wrecking the health care system, amnesty would have already been granted to the economy-raping hordes invading our country from below, unions would still be sending our jobs overseas, and most importantly, there would no longer be prosperity from a tech boom for Democrats to take credit for while working against it at every turn, delaying the natural consequences of economically suicidal Democrat policies (see, the Clinton Recession).