| OK so did anyone watch Recount last night on HBO? Living rather close to Palm Beach County, and seeing DH was in reruns, I decided to watch.
I generally find films about real life incidents to be somewhat distracting when they try to find actors to look and act like the actual people they are portraying. I have to tell you, that some of the resemblences and mannerisms were quite good. For this film, it worked. And there were times when I wasn't sure if they were showing actual TV clips of the madness that was recounting ballots or if they were reinactments. They were very realistic. I learned even more about how hanging chads are pushed back into their slots during counting after seeing the movie. And I learned that, as the chad containers under the ballots filled up beyond their capacity, that the chad would not be able to be punched at all. There were ALOT of dimpled chads for this very reason. Especially in poorer precincts where they did not have the personel to properly keep up the machines. Seems hard to understand why an entire ballet with dimpled chads showing clear intent in multiple races were determined to be non-votes. They held some of those punch card ballots up, and every race on many cards that day were punched hard enough to dimple or pole a hole in the slot, but not cause the chad to drop. And I had forgotten about the significance of Texas law re: hanging and dimpled chads--Texas considers them a vote. Florida law did not specify. Some of that was never explained in just that manner before, and I read every article and even kept papers for those weeks for years. I found it facinating, esp some of the behind the scence interactions.
I found comic relief in Laura Dern's portrayal of Katherine Harris. Even funnier was that she really nailed it!! |