(2008) A fiasco in Florida. There's the real world, and then there's the world most people just want to believe in. Those two worlds collided in Florida from November through mid-December 2000. To this day no one knows for certain which of those two worlds prevailed.

Elderly voters in Palm Beach, Florida, are shown struggling to make sense of the butterfly ballot at the outset of director Jay Roach's HBO-TV movie, written by Danny Strong; actual footage of Gore, Bush, Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, Bob Dole, and others are inserted into the story.

In Tallahassee, former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, Ron Klain (Kevin Spacey), recently recalled to the campaign, though his position and future prospects feel like an eight-year demotion, suddenly finds himself at the center the political universe when the Associated Press - unlike all of the TV news departments having finally called the election in favor of Texas Governor George W. Bush, after CNN initially declared Gore the victor - declines to declare a winner, citing "wrong numbers." Klain and his staff scramble to contact Gore, imploring him not to deliver his concession speech; the vice president then places a second phone call to Bush, retracting his earlier concession.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (Laura Dern), appearing clueless in haute-couture clothing and cosmetics, is required by law to announce that with a difference of only 1784 votes out of nearly six million cast (0.03%) a mandatory machine recount must occur in all counties. (Later Clay Roberts informs Ms Harris that 18 out of 67 counties refused to comply with her order, about which he recommends keeping quiet.)

Jack Young, a Democrat recount lawyer, asks: "Anybody here ever heard of a chad?" Overseeing the recount on Gore's behalf is urbane, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher (John Hurt); for Bush, his father's Secretary of State James Baker (Tom Wilkinson), who arrives prepared to wage "a street fight for the presidency of the United States."

While the Republicans led by Baker and Ben Ginsberg (Bob Balaban), chief counsel for Bush ("The stains of Bill Clinton will be washed away"), are unified in their strategy (file law suit to be on the path to the Supreme Court if necessary), determined that their candidate should, no matter what, be president, the Democrats are conflicted: while Klain urges joining law suits, Christopher disagrees, preferring negotiation; without a state provision permitting a statewide recount, Klain ("We've got to start punching, Chris") suggests going county by county to which Christopher demurs ("The world is watching us"), concerned as to how others will perceive the US as a democracy.

Frustrated with the Gore team's passive approach, Michael Whouley (Denis Leavy), the vice president's national field director for the campaign, encourages Klain to become a brawler, to fight for voters' intent ("hanging chad" and "dimpled ballots") by demanding a hand recount of the 175,000 undercounted ballots.

After watching Christopher ("There's no shame in placing country above party") meekly discuss, attempting to find a compromise, with Baker (adamantly opposed to a hand recount), Klain ("I'm not even sure I like Al Gore") takes off the gloves when the vote difference drops to just 327 in Bush's favor; the Dems focus on four liberal counties - Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia - pressing Harris (who's being ridiculed in the media, of whom even Baker says in exasperation, "This woman is hopeless") to extend the certification deadline. "You're about to pick the leader of the free world," Mac Stipanovich (Bruce McGill) says to Harris: "Bring it in for a landing with George W. Bush as pilot."

Legal wrangling over the ambiguous, contradictory wording of the election statutes sends the election into the courts; Judge Terry Lewis rules that Harris must come up with a reason to reject late ballots. The best appellate lawyer in the country, David Boies (Ed Begley Jr), comes to the aid of Gore's argument before the Florida Supreme Court (six out of seven justices judged to be liberals), which orders a stay of certification. Citing Texas law, signed by none other than Governor Bush, which authorized taking chad (noun in which spelling of singular and plural are the same) and dimpled ballots into consideration when hand counting, the Democrats win a new deadline for certification (five additional days until November 26th) and direction from the court for the four counties to start recounting.

Unfortunately, during the debate over whether or not to accept military ballots lacking postmarks, dates, and witness signatures (denied for absentee ballots coming from Floridian denizens living in Israel), vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman (himself on videotape) breaks ranks favoring counting them (Whose side is he on?), undercutting Gore's opposition. Another huge slight to an estimated 20,000 voters comes to light: official voter purge lists, which included along with felons, people whose names were similar ("clear mismatches") to felons', nearly half of whom were African Americans.

After Secretary Harris declares Bush president by 537 votes, Boies sues in the Florida Supreme Court, Gore v Harris, once again getting a favorable opinion (4-3), ordering a recount of all under-voted ballots in 58 counties by December 12th. Baker retaliates, going to the US Supreme Court with a request for an immediate stay: If the election cannot be decided by electoral votes on or before December 12th, constitutional law requires a state's legislature to determine the outcome.

Confident that the Republicans can't prove "irreparable harm," Boies and the Dems are floored when the stay is issued with an announcement that the nine justices (though Justice Stevens calls the decision by the majority "unwise") will hear the case. Klain states the principle of the Democrats' case: "Every vote from every citizen deserves to be counted." In Bush v Gore, Boies again brings up the Texas standard, admitting that in Florida with different machines and ballots a single standard cannot be applied throughout the state.

Two seemingly contradictory rulings emerge. The Court's majority (7-2) agrees with Gore's contention that there has been a violation of equal protection, but then states that there is not enough time to resolve the dispute. The second ruling (5-4) is unique, "limited to the present circumstances."

Unwilling to quit, Klain wants to petition the Florida Supreme Court to set standards, but Gore tells him over the phone: "Even if I win, I can't win." In the Republican camp, Baker (who until he was 40, before his wife's death from cancer and then being asked by George H.W. Bush to assist with his congressional campaign, had been a Democrat) crows that the "system worked" and "the rule of law" prevailed.

Venting to Klain, Whouley enumerates a string of problems that defeated Gore, beginning with their not immediately going after a statewide recount when there still was time to Ralph Nader's attracting millions of votes nationally that otherwise might have gone to Gore. What might have happened, he speculates, if Bush had been in Gore's position and asked for a recount.

Did the better man win? Who actually won the 2000 election?

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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