| Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election |
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|---|---|
| Directed by | Richard Ray Pérez Joan Sekler |
| Produced by | Richard Ray Pérez Joan Sekler |
| Written by | William Haugse Richard Ray Pérez Joan Sekler |
| Starring | Danny Glover (2004) Peter Coyote |
| Music by | Bobby Johnston |
| Cinematography | Richard Ray Pérez |
| Editing by | William Haugse Matthew Martin |
| Distributed by | Alternavision Films |
| Release date(s) | September 17, 2002 (U.S. premiere) |
| Running time | 47 min. (2002) 57 min. (2004) |
| Language | English |
Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election is a 2002 47-minute documentary made by Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler and narrated by Peter Coyote about the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida. It was re-released two years later in an extended 57-minute 2004 Campaign Edition presented by Danny Glover to tie in with the 2004 US Presidential Election.
Contents |
The film chronicles the 2000 US Presidential Election aftermath, centering on the contested ballots of the state of Florida. Many Democratic and leftist supporters, campaign workers, and citizens were interviewed regarding the possible exclusion of many valid ballots. According to the film, Secretary of the State of Florida Katherine Harris and her associates used a wide ranging data collection system to prevent ineligible voters (such as ex-cons) from casting a ballot; the controversy stems from the claims that the data system excluded many people who were eligible to vote. The film offers evidence that many people who share a name and nothing else with an ex-con in a state were denied their right to vote. The cases of mistaken identity were not discovered until citizens reached the polls, when it was too late to prove their identity and correct the mistake.
The film then attempts to draw connections among Governor Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and the Republican Party (both national and state parties), to make the case that they conspired ahead of the election to deny African Americans their right to vote, by exploiting the flawed data system that excludes ex-cons and ineligible voters. Reasoning that African Americans typically vote heavily in favor of Democratic candidates, the Republicans worked to exclude these votes to capture the state's electoral votes, the film argues. Another area of contention brought up by the film is that recounts were only taken in certain counties, not statewide; again, this is suggested to be a Republican tactic due to the evidence presented by the film which claims that the recounts in those counties were vastly different from the original count.
The 2004 extended 57-minute 2004 Campaign Edition was released to tie in with the 2004 US Presidential Election. This edition of the film features a filmed introduction from Danny Glover and an epilogue spent analyzing the drawbacks of the new computer ballot system, which does not leave any paper trail with which to enact a manual hand recount should the need arise. The film claims that the computer systems also had errors, but there was no way to know how many due to the lack of a paper trail.
The computer ballot example used is the Georgia Governor's race between incumbent Roy Barnes and challenger, and victor, Sonny Perdue in 2002. Because Governor Perdue is the first Republican governor elected in Georgia since Reconstruction, the film strongly suggests that hackers and key personnel with access to the computer balloting system may have been able to influence the outcome of the election, propelling Perdue to the governor's mansion. The film does not mention the wide array of political issues which had made Governor Barnes very unpopular in the state before the election, specifically his drastic reductions in education spending and overall budgetary difficulties of the state.
Ned Martel, writing in the New York Times, describes it and its companion piece Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties as somber films, which use experts and eyewitnesses to less rousing effect than Michael Moore. He concludes that, From the muddle comes a coda warning that electronic voting machines, to be used next month in some states, will have no paper trail, no possibility of audit and even less evidence for polemicists like Mr. Greenwald who want to make sense — or political hay — of the aftermath.[1]