In the last several elections, the public has been poorly served in several major ways. The Supreme Court's decision to halt the recount in Florida in 2000 did not serve either Florida voters or the American people. Although the 2004 election was riddled with complaints and problems, Congress and the media continued to attack anyone raising legitimate concerns. This left us with yet another questionable election with questionable results.
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.
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
Your article is excellent! Thanks for the heads up to it.
Among many favorite, well articulated, full-flavored quotes is this one:
"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."
AE, OH
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 8:18:12 PM
I respect Joan's point of view and appreciate the well-written and articulate review. In response to her point about not providing enough coverage on the electoral issues and voter disenfranchisement in Ohio, we have found, in showing the film to audiences, that many highly-educated and otherwise well-informed citizens didn't even know that January 5th occurred, much less that Ken Blackwell was serving two masters, his candidate on one hand, and the electorate on the other.
Our objective was to provide an overview of the process for a more general audience, and to shine a light on some of the issues that the mainstream media neglected. We could only show what we had on tape, and feel that with our footage from Ohio on Election Day and in DC on January 5th that we maximized coverage and kept to the scope of our objective.
There are others who set out to cover the story of how the elections were manipulated, and did a good job of it, our story was more of a journey through the final 30 days, to provide an on-the-ground alternative to the junk coverage that is propagated by CNN and Fox and campaign spinmeisters. I think Joan will agree that we succeeded in providing a fresh perspective in that regard.
by
jedwardwolf (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Monday, April 16, 2007 at 8:15:50 AM
I want to buy the movie below for our Peace Network showing. We showed Invisible Ballots last year and thought this would be a good followup, unless you have another idea...we have shown the one with Cynthia Mc Kinney...Black something..can't remember name right now. How can I purchase this film? I have tried to find it on the website you have given , but can't. I am welcome to all ideas for films...we basically show war-peace stuff, but since I am involved with the voting machine issue here in Georgia, we throw in some voting issues. Thanks, R V
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 4:36:52 PM
Thanks for this...I look forward to seeing the video. Hope it comes my way. As much as I was so impressed with Kerry's courage and early Congressional testimony all those years ago, I think I will never forgive or forget how he dropped the ball in Ohio. He assured us (in talks at meetings with the NY Democratic Lawyers' Council) that he had the money put aside and was prepared to finance any vote fraud inquiry and lawsuit, in the end his good ole boy status won out.
I'm saving your piece since it organizes some of the happenings in a solid and well-written way.
Unless an article or writing is short, I've stopped sending them to all but the true-believers since no one seems to feel that along with their ___ other e-mails they have the time to read four pages.
Thanks again,
NR, NY
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 4:39:33 PM
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