ITVS: COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY

Hail to the Thief banner and Surrender Gorethy banner

Citizens from both sides exercise freedom of expression.

The story of what happened in Florida during the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential race plays like a drama in many acts. From election night, when the three networks erroneously called the state before the polls closed, to 36 days later when the Supreme Court made the highly controversial decision to halt the recount and call the election for George W. Bush, Americans were stunned by what they saw. As the confusing stories piled up - of voter fraud, "dimpled, pregnant and hanging chads," African Americans whose names were purged from the rolls, Jewish Palm Beach retirees who were horrified to learn they had voted for Pat Buchanan - both candidates swiped at each other, each seeming less presidential as the days dragged on. But concern, outrage and continued investigation of the debacle became a casualty of September 11th. The New York Times wrote, "The Florida debate shifted from 'who won' to 'who cares.'"

Butterfly ballot and Jesse Jackson in Florida protest

Top: Palm Beach County's "butterfly ballot"
Bottom: The Reverend Jesse Jackson leads a march with Irma Fleishman of Boca Raton (left) and Joanna Carbone of Boynton Beach © Jason Millstein / The Palm Beach Post

Before the fiasco in Florida, most Americans assumed that the votes they cast would be counted in accordance with one of the fundamental principles of American democracy, yet 175,000 votes cast in that state, largely by the working poor and people of color, were uncounted. COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY asserts that a systematic pattern of behavior on the part of the state's various election boards, overseen by a compromised elections department, resulted in a myriad of lost votes. Thousands of African American voters were purged from the voter rolls and, in some counties, African Americans were required to present three forms of I.D.; in other counties, none. In communities with large Spanish-speaking populations, translators and bilingual ballots were unexplainably absent. In communities with large Jewish populations, confusing ballots made what looked like a vote for Al Gore actually a vote for Pat Buchanan. The film also shows how both sides responded to the situation - with schoolyard bullying and taunts of "sore loser," by sending busloads of protesters (actually the party faithful) to disrupt the recounts, by each candidate calling for recounts only in precincts they expected to win, and by fighting against recounts in precincts they thought they would lose. What emerges is a shocking but very clear picture of political interests cynically ignoring and overriding the will of voters. As 1960s Civil Rights Leader Rep. John Lewis says in the film, "People struggled, people died for the right to vote. And there are people saying we should forget about it, we shouldn't make too much of it. How can you sweep it under the rug like it didn't happen? It did happen."

Update Florida 2002

After the presidential recount of 2000, Florida invested $30 million on modern optical scanning equipment, touch-screen machines and better training for poll workers. Its first test of the new voting system, the gubernatorial primary on September 10, 2002, showed that the state's electoral system is still flawed.

Most of the problems were reported in 14 counties - Broward and Miami-Dade in particular - both of which were the early focus of trouble in the 2000 presidential election. In Miami, hundreds of voters were turned away in Liberty City (a black neighborhood where gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno has strong support) due to faulty equipment.

Officials blamed errors on poorly trained poll workers, who were unfamiliar with the new technology. But touch-screen terminals were also to blame. Some screens registered votes for the wrong candidate while others presented the wrong party's candidates. Although Governor Jeb Bush extended polling hours due to technical snafus, some precincts closed well before 9:00 p.m. In South Florida, voters complained that poll workers left early because they were tired.

On September 17, 2002, Janet Reno, who lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Bill McBride, announced that she plans to file a lawsuit over malfunctioning touch-screen voting machines and other problems that affected the September 10 primary.