Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. intones early in the film that we had "Florida one year, Ohio another. Who knows what will happen in 2008? In 2012?" Good question, indeed. At this point, there is no reason to expect anything good. Voter confidence is way down, and deservedly so. A stack of independent studies done since 2004 have all concluded that there are very serious flaws in our electronic voting system, which has already cost us four billion dollars. (This includes the GAO report of September 2005, the Carter-Baker commission, The Black Box Voting/Harri Hursti Hack in Leon County Florida in December 2005, the Florida Technical Advisory, the Princeton Center Report hack, various books by Mark Crispin Miller, Stephen F. Freeman, Greg Palast, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, and numerous articles at the Columbus Free Press, BlackBoxVoting.org and BradBlog.com.)
The four billion dollar price tag does not take into account the costs of Bush's policies, including, but not limited to, the war in Iraq. If we do not begin to take democracy seriously and work to restore it, in the end there will be nothing left. If we don't fix the system, the fourth factor in the formula "issues – candidates – parties – election system" will again overtake and pervert our elections.
Am I being too critical? As I've said, Swing State Ohio is a fine piece of documentary work, but I don't feel it goes far enough. Let me offer an analogy. Suppose the subject of the film was the baking of a cake, and they interviewed the farmer, the grocer, and the chef, and filmed the mixing of the ingredients and the cake baking in the oven. There's even a nice closing shot of the pan cooling on the counter. But suppose it turns out that one of the ingredients had been contaminated and those who ate the cake were stricken by severe food poisoning and hospitalized. Stopping the film before the end would omit a key element of the story, giving an incomplete, and therefore misleading, view of the whole picture.
I imagine that Wolfington and company struggled with this issue and came down where they did because venturing into the theme of election fraud/disenfranchisement/illegalities could so easily have blown up in their faces. But, if those factors contributed to the official results, don't they need to be accounted for? If one side is not playing by the rules, isn't it ridiculous to pretend that they are? This serves no one, and certainly does not present the whole truth.
The sad fact is that 2006, like the three previous elections, was rife with what the press termed "irregularities and glitches," but that were actually illegal maneuvers that grossly affected the outcome. As much as they rushed to assure the public that none of the problems would have actually changed the voting outcome, the evidence, suppressed though it's been, indicates otherwise. We may not like it, but that's the truth. We can't make a move to fix it until it's been acknowledged and thoroughly and dispassionately investigated. Because the press and various elected officials (mistakenly labeled public servants) have walked away from the fight just makes our job more difficult. But putting our hands over our eyes, ears, and mouths makes us no better than that famous trio of monkeys.
Having said that, is Swing State Ohio worth seeing? Yes, definitely. I was impressed with it as a well-done film with great production values. It demonstrates a good command of a large and diverse body of material. They interviewed a wide range of people and did a nice job capturing the election frenzy. My interest was held, and I watched it twice in two days! As long as you keep in mind that there is an iceberg of information still largely submerged, I can comfortably recommend this film.
I still maintain that there is a difference between being impartial and being balanced. Artificially balancing facts only skews the truth. I look forward to the day that Swing State Ohio can stand alone because the press has filled in the rest, informing the public and doing their time-honored job of protecting the precious workings of our democracy. But that day is not yet here.
Part of the problem with a short work is that all the filmmaker can offer is the flavor of something, as a lot must get left on the cutting room floor. Wolfington uses cinematic shorthand, with certain shots highlighting various aspects of the campaign, and selected interviews demonstrating different points of view. But without the proper context, a snippet of an interview can give a totally misleading impression, like the proverbial blind men with the elephant. For example, how many remember Richard Nixon loudly and somberly proclaiming, "I am not a crook." Out of context, you might think that he sounded earnest and give him the benefit of the doubt.
In this film we have Ken Blackwell, who looks and sounds sincere while making statements about the election and his role in it. If you were unaware of the fact, for instance, that a recent court case sentenced two Cuyahoga County election officials to 18 months for falsifying the recount, you might take his comments at face value. But it is hard to believe that these lowly election officials were operating on their own initiative. Or, how about his egregious and energetic purging of Ohio's legal voters to the tune of more than 300,000 prior to the 2004 election and afterwards another 170,000 from Columbus alone? Viewed in this context, his comments are self-serving and ludicrous, if not downright lies. The fact that he's congenial, smiles nicely, and holds a friendly conversation with the interviewers notwithstanding. Context is everything, which must be borne in mind when viewing this otherwise well-done documentary.
www.swingstatethemovie.com
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