I just watched the movie Unprecedented, about the 2000 Presidential Election being stolen in Florida. It included many revelations that I have not read in the mainstream media. Much of it is based upon research by journalist Greg Palast. For more info. see www.gregpalast.com. Many of his findings received front page coverage in Britain, but were ignored in the U.S.
Here's some highlights of this anger-inducing movie:
1. Before the 2000 Election, African-Americans were organizing a major voter registration and "get out the vote" campaign because of anger towards Governor Jeb Bush's abolition of affirmative action. This effort threatened Jeb Bush's promise to deliver Florida for his brother.
2. The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature then authorized hiring a private firm to identify convicted felons who should be removed from the voters rolls. A Republican-controlled firm named Data Base Technologies (now Choicepoint) was hired, without any competion, for $4 million. They were directed by Florida's attorneys to generate lists of possible felons that were "broad and all-encompassing." The company warned Florida officials that the lists were resulting in many names who were not felons, but Florida's attorneys told them that is what they wanted. For example, innocent voters were listed as being felons because they had the same first and last name as someone convicted of a felony somewhere in the U.S. A very high percentage of the inaccurate information came from the State of Texas. The inaccurate lists were then turned over to election officials of each county, who were ordered to delete the voters from the rolls. As a result, thousands of innocent people were not allowed to vote. One county official researched the list for his county and found that 95 percent of the supposed felons were not felons. About half of the people who were improperly not allowed to vote were African-Americans. Everyone knew that African-Americans were most likely to vote Democratic.
3. The film shows an organized effort to disrupt the manual recounts. This included a near-riot outside the doors of County Election Offices by a mob. The film freezes the images to identiy 10 aides of Republican congressmen who were flown down from Washington to lead the mob.
4. The computer firm admitted the mistakes after being sued by the NAACP. However, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris* did not put the voters back on the rolls until AFTER the 2002 election. The 2002 election featured an extremely close re-election of Jeb Bush.
* Florida Co-Chair of the George W. Bush Election Committee.
5. In 2001, a consortium of newspapers had conducted their own recount of the Florida votes. Those newspapers announced in headlines that George W. Bush would have won Florida if there had been a manual recount of the 4 disputed Florida counties. However, buried in these articles was their conclusion that if ALL of the counties had experienced a manual recount, Gore would have clearly won Florida and thereby become President! Gore would have won under each of four different standards for counting the votes.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/111201a.html(Of course, these results did not take into account the thousands of people in Palm Beach County
who mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan because of a deceptive "butterfly ballot," and the thousands of people who were illegally removed from the voter's rolls.)
6. There was 75 years of court precedent in Florida supporting the type of manual recounts that the Democrats had requested. The State Supreme Court's decision authorizing manual recounts was stopped 3 hours later by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, George W. was selected by a 5-4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court. This was the only case in the history of the Supreme Court in which the Court limited the applicability of its decision to this one case. Otherwise, the unprecedented decision could have been used to overturn election results across the country.
7. Supreme Court Justice Antonio Scalia did not recuse himself even though his two sons worked for law firms employed by the Bush Campaign. One of the sons was later rewarded with a top post in the U.S. Labor Dept. Clarence Thomas's wife also had the responsibility at the time to review resumes of persons seeking appointments in the Bush Administration.
8. In a dissenting opinion, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Stevens, Ginsberg and Breyer said:
"One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
I have not found the movie in local video stores, but they do have for rent through www.netflix.com (which is a great way to watch movies). You can also buy it on www.amazon.com.
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