How Al Gore Almost Stole an Election

"Our sort of motto has been, get the story right, get the facts right, tell it honestly and tell the truth."
-Kevin Spacey, actor portraying Ron Klain (campaign aide to Al Gore and former V.P. chief of staff), commenting about the HBO movie, "Recount"

How convenient, then, that the HBO movie, which debuted last Sunday, has this disclaimer: "based on certain facts". Like the fact that this movie is written by, for, and about Gore-supporting Democrats? No revisionist partisan parsing of the facts present, right? Wrong.

The movie is passing itself off as a docudrama that is supposedly even-handed in its account.

One of the movie's consultants is ABC's Jack Tapper who admits to Washington Post's Howard Kurtz:

the film is "a fictional version of what happened" and "tilts to the left because it's generally told from the point of view of the Democrats."

Entertainment Weekly's Gillian Flynn (by way of NewsBusters):

Recount may not be downright blue, but it's not as purply as it wants to appear. Despite its ''equal time'' approach, Recount is an underdog story, and thus a Democrat story.

A good number of Americans are not aware of the political propaganda and partisan dishonesty that goes into a "docudrama" like this. It has the effect of indoctrinating more and more Americans to the liberal mindset and beliefs, that 2000 was a stolen election and Bush heir to an illegitimate presidency that was handed over to him by the Supreme Court. But as Richard Baehr writes, "the U.S. Supreme Court action probably prevented the theft of the election in Florida from occurring."

President Bush won. So how could he steal what was already his? It was Al Gore and his blitzkrieg of lawyers who attempted to steal the 2000 presidential election, by being selective in their recount methods.

The left likes to say that the United States Supreme Court gave the election to Bush. They did no such thing. What they did was reverse the Florida Supreme Court's effort to keep on counting until Gore won. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Bush v Gore may not have been a model of jurisprudence, but the left also ignores the fact that the decision to over—rule the Florida Supreme Court was not a 5—4 decision dictated by the five conservative members of the Court, but a 7 to 2 decision. Even two liberals on the Court were offended by the machinations of the Florida court and its creation of a chaotic vote counting system for the 'undervotes'.

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The US Supreme Court decision over—ruling the Florida Supreme Court had two parts: the first a 7 to 2 vote over—ruling the vote counting system established by the Florida Supreme Court ; the second a 5 to 4 vote, requiring the vote count to be concluded almost immediately so that Florida could participate in the Electoral College process.

Had the second decision been 5 to 4 the other way, it is likely that the Florida count would not have been concluded in time for the state to determine a winner and select a slate of electors to the Electoral College. In that case, one of two scenarios would have played out. One is that the Florida legislature, Republican dominated, would have selected the Bush electors to vote in the Electoral College. Alternatively, no Florida electors would have been selected, and neither Bush nor Gore would have won a majority of the Electoral College vote. In that case, the US House of Representatives, voting by states (as in 1824), would have picked Bush since the GOP controlled more state delegations than the Democrats. So even if the 5—4 portion of the U.S. Supreme Court decision had gone the other way, Bush would still have become our President.

Antonin Scalia on 60 Minutes, April 27, 2008:

"People say that that decision was not based on judicial philosophy but on politics," Stahl asks.

"I say nonsense," Scalia says.

Was it political?

"Gee, I really don’t wanna get into - I mean this is - get over it. It's so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn't even close. The vote was seven to two," Scalia says.

Moreover, he says it was not the court that made this a judicial question.

"It was Al Gore who made it a judicial question. It was he who brought it into the Florida courts. We didn't go looking for trouble. It was he who said, 'I want this to be decided by the courts.' What are we supposed to say? 'Oh, not important enough,'" Scalia jokes.

"It ended up being a political decision" Stahl points out.

"Well you say that. I don't say that," Scalia replies.

"You don’t think it handed the election to George Bush?" Stahl asks.

"Well how does that make it a political decision?" Scalia asks.

"It decided the election," Stahl says.

"If that’s all you mean by it, yes," Scalia says.

"That’s all I mean by it," Stahl says.

"Oh, ok. I suppose it did. Although you should add to that that it would have come out the same way, no matter what," Scalia says.

Analysis from the National Research Center study on Florida Ballot Project comprehensive review, sponsored by major news organizations, found that the selective county by county recount advocated by the Gore lawyers would still have resulted in a Gore defeat and Bush victory.

Every newspaper in Florida did their own little investigation, and concluded that President Bush won the Election.

"African voter disenfranchisement"? Not a single black voter ever came forward with a credible claim, and voter turnout for black Floridians was higher than in previous elections. (*cough*military absentee ballots*cough*)

"Butterfly ballots"? Designed and approved of by Democrats.

Instructions were provided at every polling station in Florida where punch-card ballots were used; so if your chad is hanging or pregnant, take responsibility for the most important decision you're about to cast. Old Soldier said it best:

in regards to voting; where does the government's responsibility end and the voter's responsibility begin? I believe the government has a responsibility to provide a voting process by which a vast majority of the voters can render a lawful vote. I also believe it is encumbant upon the government to institute measures to regulate voting and establish consequences for failure to comply with the laws governing voting. That means that the government should ensure a voter is a citizen who is elligible to vote, is properly registered and renders a vote that complies with the specified requirements. Failure on the part of a voter to render a lawful vote should not become a burden upon the government. To wit, failure to render a lawful vote bears the consequence of not having that vote counted. Every polling place I have ever entered has had election commission oversight and paid helpers to assist the voters in any manner possible to ensure their vote is indeed 'lawful.'

One final sidenote:

About 20% of votes gets thrown out for various reasons in every election and in every state already, right?

Well, Florida was indeed a very, very close race. That being acknowledged, did you know that 4 other states were also within less than half of one per cent in difference? I forget one of them, but three of them were Iowa (I'm pretty sure), Wisconsin, and New Mexico (only 300 votes differentiated Gore and Bush- in Florida it was something like 500 a 500 vote differential). And guess what else? Gore won these 4 other states, no different really than Florida; what if Bush wanted to pull the same stunt as Gore did over Florida? At a certain point, this only hurts us, and one can probably draw questions regarding many elections, tying us up forever.

Further to my point about those states which were close wins for Gore: Florida is worth only 25 electoral votes. These 4 other states were worth 30 each, from what I can recall.

Richard Baehr, makes the same point in his article:

It is also worth noting, that with the exception of Florida, every other state that was decided by less than 1% in the 2000 election went to Gore: New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Oregon. These four states combined had 30 Electoral College votes, 5 more than Florida. While there were murky circumstances surrounding the Gore victories in every one of them, the results were not contested by any Bush 'lawyer blitzkrieg' in any of them. In fact, the Democrats know more about winning close federal elections than the Republicans, in recent years. In the past five years, Democrats have won Senate elections in South Dakota, Nevada and Washington State, by an average margin of 0.1% of the total vote cast.

So "stolen election Democrats": Get over it. It was almost 8 years ago. YOUR president and MY president, George W. Bush, will be out of office in 6 months.

But of course, releasing this movie in the middle of a presidential election year is about the future, isn't it? Thanks. It's good to be reminded that if it isn't close, Democrats can't cheat.

In the end, as Republican lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, puts it: "Republicans won the recount. Democrats won the movie."

Enjoy your HBO fantasy movie, and dream on, Democrats!