'Recount' Stars Voting Machine That Doomed Gore
Over the holiday weekend, my wife M.C. Moewe wrote a news story for the Daytona Beach News-Journal on the Volusia County optical scan voting machine that registered 16,000 negative votes for Al Gore right as the networks were scrambling to decide who won Florida:
HBO's new docudrama Recount stars Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary, but the real scene-stealer hails from Volusia County -- a voting machine that registered 16,000 negative votes for Al Gore in the wee hours of election night 2000.
"A machine in Volusia went crazy," says Leary in the film, portraying a Gore campaign strategist. "It actually added 3,000 votes to Bush's total and subtracted thousands of votes from Gore. I mean Gore's count right now is negative 16,000 in that county."
What caused the voting machine memory card glitch is not a topic in the account that premieres tonight at 9 o'clock. In fact, it still remains unknown and begs the question: Could it happen again? ...
At the time, employees with the machine's maker said in internal e-mails that an unknown "second" memory card caused the problem. After inquiries from The News-Journal, officials with Diebold Inc.'s Premier Election Solutions recently said there is a problem with a part on the machines in question -- 25,000 are used across the U.S -- which could cause memory card failures.
In Volusia County, the same "crazy" optical scan machines that delivered Gore's negative vote total are still in use.
The negative votes in 2000 could have been caused by four problems according to internal e-mails written by the machine's manufacturer, then called Global Election Systems. A corrupt memory card, an invalid read from a good card, corruption of memory or a card from an "un-authorized source."
As a programmer, I've never understood how Diebold's voting software accepted negative votes and lowered a candidate's total. You'd think the logical impossibility would've caused the input to be rejected before it altered the course of American history.
Comments
But the damage had been done, said "Recount" scriptwriter Danny Strong.
"As far as perception -- Gore going into the recount as quote 'the loser' -- that was very damaging for him and significantly affected his strategy on how to approach the recount," said Strong, adding journalists and other experts were hired to scrutinize the script. "We all did the best we could to make it as accurately as we could."
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Sound very convienent for the movies democratic makers. Is this fact or just left wing fantasy as they imagine that Algore would have made the world a green uptopia without war or poverty?
The writers are democrats, the director is a democrat, and the actors are democrats, but it strives to tell the story 'accurately'?
Given hollyweirds hard left, anti war, anti Bush trackrecord, I won't be holding my breath about the accuracy of Recount.
Sorry REX, the machinations put in place to ensure that corrupted memory card and it's votes (and 10's of thousands of other votes) were never reviewed may not equate to a rosy Al Gore scenario. What it does for your beloved Republican party, however, is point out just how power oriented it is, placing themselves above the actual will of the voters of Florida.
Your criticism of Gore, while "possibly accurate", does nothing to erase the theft of the presidential election in 2000 in Florida, and most likely, 2004 in Ohio.
This was a coup detat, a partisan power grab in the most disgraceful way possible.
Under Gore, however, here's a list of things that MIGHT not have occurred....
Government support and nonexistent executive oversight for the financial shell games which resulted in the sup prime mortgage crisis and the billions in tax payer funded support to mitigate the losses of Bear Stearns, Countrywide and a host of other finance houses which were prevented from failing.
9/11 - Yes, Clinton, (General Wesley Clarke) we now know, was well aware of the threats of Osama Bin Laden and his desire and methods for attacking America. ( and by deduction, the quagmire in Iraq as well)
Politicization of the Justice department, investigation of respected attorneys general for NOT pursuing democratic indictments in spite of a lack of evidence.
The traitorous destruction of an active covert CIA front operation which was tracking (and disrupting) terror state's efforts to acquire WMD's.
The politicization of the EPA resulting in significant setbacks in the control and reduction of pollution, greenhouse gasses, resource conservation and even investment in alternative fuels.
The Dick Cheney super secret energy policy workgroup which brought rolling blackouts to California and other western states and the green light for companies like Enron to manipulate the energy market driving up prices and restricting distribution which resulted in Rolling Blackouts becoming a household phrase. And which ultimately led to Enron's demise and the loss of BILLIONS in blue collar retirement investments.
That's a short list Rex. Granted it's speculative, but knowing what we do of Al Gore's policy statements, and of what history has unfolded (thanks to a "Liberal Media" that is complicit in the NON reporting of events), it's probably a good bet that we would not be in such dire straits as we are today.
The Republican brand, today, Rex, sucks. And there is no one to blame except, republicans.
Hopefully Rex, you will leave you head buried in the sand and allow the rest of us working stiffs to clean up the godawful mess you and the rest of your apologists have created.
There's no controversy about the "negative" 16,022 votes, Rix; the pinko Hollywood types didn't make that up -- Diebold admitted the negative vote problem happened.
By the way, being "anti war" and "anti Bush" isn't even a lefty-Hollywood opinion anymore -- an overwhelming majority of the citizens of the United States of America have been anti-war and anti-Bush for a long time now.
Which is a shame, because I totally support Bush and his conduct of the Iraq War. We'll free those f*cking Iraqis if we have to kill every last one of them to do it!
Yeah, Rex! I hate those anti-war Hollywood liberals too - like former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan who says in his new memoir:
"History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided -- that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder." McClellan wrote in "What Happened," due out Monday. "...war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary," he wrote in the preface.
My, my, seems like someone touched a hot button issue.
Hollyweird made a phony movie to feed to the rubes and now it's 'fact', I love it.
P.T. Barnum sure knew what he was talking about.
It was the evil Mr. Diebold, in the library, with the hanging chad,..... yea, he did it.
I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you maroons.
Cash only.
Smear the messenger and hope the message disappears? Rex, your tried and true methods of disinformation no longer work.
I agree, P.T. Barnum did know what he was doing, and his greatest students appear to be republican operatives.
Answer me this...should unreliable and demonstrably hackable electronic vote tabulation be allowed to continue? Would you have supported the same points had Democrats been behind the machinations? (Entirely possible).
Do you hate the constitution or something?
Do you honestly think people who are skeptical after years of deception are whack jobs?
What is it, Rex, that makes you so obstinate in the face of such overwhelming evidence of criminal behavior on the part of the RNC?
What is it about the movie that's a lie? (Other than the lies of omission already pointed out which are well documented and in the public record.)
I believe, actually, that you are afraid.
To me, that is a good sign.
I hate to burst your imaginary bubble, but I voted for Gore.
Somehow the Diebold machine negates every other aspect of the 2000 election in some peoples' minds, including the makers of that ridiculous excuse for a movie. And Scott McLellan having a late-life conversion has something to do with it all, apparently, despite the fact that he has nothing to say about the election in question. Why do liberals have to run everything together when they get all hot and bothered about a single topic? "Do you hate the Constitution"? Seriously?
People who minimize the Diebold debacle should get back to me the next time their guy loses an election because he lost a state where he might have actually won the state, had all the votes been counted in a competent and accountable manner. The most thorough accounting I read of Florida votes, based on the standards in the state, suggested a 500-vote Gore win.
Ultimately, the 2000 election proved that the U.S. is not yet capable of handling an election where the margin of victory is numbered in hundreds of votes in one state. You'd think the shining city on the hill, the beacon of democracy, could figure out how to run a vote. My Republican county in Florida had optical scan machines that produced a paper trail and didn't involve chads. Why wasn't that used all over the state?
My solution back then, when the recount was still ongoing: Hold a second presidential vote, but just for the 50 percent of the American public who didn't vote the first time. Let Bush and Gore compete for the slackers, the disaffected, and alienated Americans.
Two words, Christine Gregoire.
I'm not sure pointing out that the machine wasn't the only factor in how the election went is minimizing, exactly. Gore's team handled the matter poorly, as did the Florida Supreme Court. Believe me, I'd rather the machines worked correctly and left trails, and it's appalling that it's still not the case everywhere. But the 2000 election is a lot more complex than most people would have you believe, and not all of the mistakes and bad behavior favored the Republicans.
Two words: curly fries.
Two words; Scat Porn?
No, Chad Porn.
I watched Recount. I can't say for sure that everything in it was accurate, though I'm guessing from the lack of outrage expressed by the 'winners' in that film that it probably did a good job of telling the story. And it was great entertainment.
"Rex" and "Uncle Mickey" seem to believe it was inaccurate. But they've yet to say what's wrong, or why they feel that way about it. How about it, boys? Put up or shut up.
Here's what we know for sure: The 2000 election was massively f**ked up. Florida was at the center of the f**kery. The original vote in Florida was clearly inaccurate, and the Republicans who controlled the state did everything in their power to prevent the votes from being counted again. Ditto for the US Supreme Court. I don't think you can dispute any of that.
And the legacy of that disaster? I can't imagine how a Gore presidency could possibly have been worse than the one we've been saddled with.
dt
"Rex" and "Uncle Mickey" seem to believe it was inaccurate. But they've yet to say what's wrong, or why they feel that way about it. How about it, boys? Put up or shut up.
I'm pretty sure that neither one actually watched the movie before dismissing it as inaccurate liberal propaganda. They're that good.
Two words: two words.
I actually did watch it (I'm good, but not that goood), but fisking is a bore and degenerates into a dumb tennis game that nobody wins. The Plame story is a great example: she wasn't undercover, and Armitage outed her, but we'll never hear the end of Cheney and Libby being the bad hats in that tale, and what a terrible crime it was that a secret agent was exposed. Even McLellan seems to think that the fact that he saw them talking together meant they were coordinating alibis, although he didn't hear what they said.
My main problem with Recount (other than the presence of Dennis Leary, who I like but can't manage to divorce from the angry smoking comic guy - for that matter, I couldn't stop thinking "Hey, there's Kevin Spacey" either) is that they had an opportunity to really lay the whole thing out, all warts on all parties, but they had to make it dramatic. Truth is subjective in such events, I suppose, but it's hard to resist making a better story out of boring old reality. Not all liberals are decent, thoughtful people who only want what's best for the country, and not all conservatives are mean, greedy people who will do anything to win.
If I see a brown nugget in the grass at a dog park, I don't have to take a bite out of it to see it's a dog turd.
I'm just glad Spacey has taken a break from prowling public toilets in London long enough to make this 'important historical work.'
Hahahahahahhaa....What rubes.
I can't say for sure that everything in it was accurate, though I'm guessing from the lack of outrage expressed by the 'winners' in that film that it probably did a good job of telling the story.
Not true. Many of the people being portrayed are pissed off, on both sides, and a lot of dialogue in the film was completely fabricated. It's historical fiction, nothing more.
Mikey - a lot of dialogue in the film was fabricated? Wait - you mean the film was only based on actual events? I thought it was an in-the-moment documentary! I was under the belief that Al Gore's recount team was headed by Kevin Spacey and Dennis Leary!
Seriously - what the damn is wrong with you people? It's a movie. Relax.
It's a movie. Relax.
So far, all the cursing, frothing and calling motives into question is being done by supporters of the movie as fact, and none by its detractors. So I'm guessing you need to relax a lot more than I do about this.
I only said I wasn't a fan, not that anyone needed to be strung up. I'm glad you see the difference between docudrama and documentary, hope everyone does as well with that.
The "history" of the 2000 election is one that is made-up by partisan Democratic party liars. Each of you know that there have been 3 independently done recounts, and that in all of them Bush won. Yet, just look up the page and count the number of those who claim the opposite!
That's why Gore chose to sue to have recounts done in Democratic districts, and not abide by Florida law, and which required a TOTAL recount. I had to laugh at one poster, above, who touted the Democrats as being somehow fair and impartial in comparison to the cheating Republicans -- meanwhile ignoring the infamous voting irregularities done by their party since the "New Deal." Indeed, the last election for governor in Washington state was a prime example of the corruption done under Democratic "supervision." No movies will be made showing that, and since only Democratics find movies about voting interesting, and when it is pointing their collective boney finger at Republicans ... not themselves ...
The independent recounts won't be in the movie, or the fact that a liberal Florida Supreme Court was suborned into violating Florida law with their "decision(s)." They won't discuss the disenfranchisement of the military, and attempts to deny their votes, in absentia. No, innstead, the partisan liars will smear Republicans with lies, innuendo and misdirected "factoids" about the machines that THEY (Democratics) DEMANDED be used, and still do so demand.
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