The new documentary film Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections takes a look at some problems within the current voting system in the United States. Told both through news reports as well as first-hand accounts of those involved with election reform, Uncounted offers an unflinching look at the problems we face in order to get our ideal of true representative democracy back on track.
The questions dealt with in the film largely arose from the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, and include:
- Was there a concerted effort to suppress votes?
- Were the votes correctly counted?
- Did the rise of electronic voting and its documented lack of security allow for easy manipulation of the vote total?
- Why were the exit polls, which had been pinpoint accurate for 40 years, suddenly wrong in predicting a Kerry victory?
- Why were nearly two million people who tried to vote told that they were not on the registration rolls?
- Perhaps most importantly, why was the national media, almost without exception, ignoring these serious and substantive issues in the months following George W. Bush's election?
Blogcritics sat down with producer/director/writer David Earnhardt in his Nashville, Tennessee office to talk about the subjects and information laid out in the film.
The angle or the approach of the documentary seems to revolve around two aspects of the voting process that seem to have some inherent problems. One of those is the technology used to capture votes. The other is the conspiracy angle, that regardless of the technology involved, people are trying to manipulate the results. Is that more or less the summary, and if so what is the ratio of the problem? Does it lean more on the technology side?
I think the third thing I would throw in, too, is just the whole voter suppression issue. Where regardless of technology, people want to vote, intend to vote, but for various reasons aren't allowed to vote. Or have to vote provisionally. For example, how the film starts out, once you get past the opening, where you had all those long lines in Ohio. Well, here you have people who wanted to vote. They go, but they encounter a five-hour line, and they just can't stay and wait. So in effect, their vote doesn't get counted because they can't stay. Because that ended up being so concentrated, particularly in inner-city, African-American communities or precincts - and it was concentrated in Democratic-leaning precincts - it had a partisan effect. And I think that is kind of where I'm coming from in all of this.
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Your interview would be a lot more interesting if you hadn't stuck to nothing but softball questions and fawning on your subject.
I'd have liked to see you ask him if he had any evidence at all that any voting machines had ever been hacked during an election (there is none) and perhaps hit him with some questions about the hundreds of thousands of bogus registrations from ACORN and other leftist groups, or perhaps the cash for votes practices of Democrats in a number of southern states.
But I guess that wouldn't suit your agenda, just as the media avoids reporting on election fraud in general because they know that any unbiased and halfway thorough investigation will reveal so much more fraud from the left than the right that it would be embarassing.
Think about it. All this furor about voting machines, yet it is the city and county and state electoral bureaucracies which are dominated by Democrats which have been the main supporters of the use of these machines.
Partisans like the people who made this film have identified a legitimate problem, but they need to come to grips at some point with the reality that if there is fraud going on, it's much more likely to be their political allies who are doing it.
Dave
2 - David R. Perry
Dave,
I'm assuming that you haven't actually watched said movie. I would recommend it (it's available via Netflix, by the way; in case anyone here subscribes), as I found it very interesting, and many of the criticisms you mention are dealt with in more detail there. I was not attempting to rehash every point or claim of the film.
Granted, the film has an admittedly obvious leftist bent to it, but I think it's ridiculous to criticize the main thrust of the film, which deals with the need for more accountability and checks and balances in the voting process. That is something that only benefits a real democracy. Your quibble seems to be with "why" they're looking into it in the first place, which is less important.
If you'd like to ask your own questions, the production company seems fairly open to media inquiries. Perhaps you can help fill in the blanks of the discussion.
By the way, your critique would be more interesting if you didn't exhibit an obviously equal, but opposite, agenda. (Agendas come from both sides, you know.)
- DRP
3 - Dave Nalle
Well, I'd normally take a middle course, but when dealing with a partisan position I'm naturally inclined to take the opposite one.
I've done a lot of reading on the voting security issue == things like actual academic studies -- but there's so much propaganda out there that I'm reluctant to watch a film. The format is much easier to use for propaganda and distortion in the grand Michael Moore tradition.
These things are getting on cable, though. So when it does I'll be all over it.
Dave
4 - John
The bias is so overwhelmingly against Republicans that the film is self- discrediting.