The media attack on Michael Moore seems to have subsided for the moment, but just for kicks, I thought I'd post some factual evidence for the movie. Because there's so much I'm not going to do it all at once, but to start I thought we could look at the 2000 Election to demonstrate exactly why EVERYONE needs to vote this year.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Fox was the first network to call Florida for Bush. Before that, some other networks had called Florida for Gore, and they changed after Fox called it for Bush.
**?With information provided from the Voter News Service, NBC was the first network to project Gore the winner in Florida at 7:48 pm. At 7:50 pm ,CNN and CBS project Gore the winner in Florida as well.? By 8:02 pm , all five networks and the Associated Press had called Gore the winner in Florida. Even the VNS called Gore the winner at 7:52 pm.At 2:16 am, Fox calls Floridafor Bush, NBC follows at 2:16 am. ABC is the last network to call the Florida for Bush, at 2:20 am, while AP and VNS never call Florida for Bush. CNN
** Ten minutes after the top of the hour, network excitement was again beginning to build. At 2:16 a.m., the call was made: Fox News Channel, with Bush's first cousin John Ellis running its election desk, was the first to project Florida -- and the presidency -- for the Texas governor. Within minutes, the other networks followed suit. "George Bush, Governor of Texas will become the 43rd President of the United States," CNN's Bernard Shaw announced atop a graphic montage of a smiling Bush. "At 18 minutes past two o'clock Eastern time, CNN declares that George Walker Bush has won Florida's 25 electoral votes and this should put him over the top." PBS
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The man who was in charge of the decision desk at FOX on election night was Bush?s first cousin, John Ellis.
**?John Ellis, a first cousin of George W. Bush, ran the network's ?decision desk? during the 2000 election, and Fox was the first to name Bush the winner. Earlier, Ellis had made six phone calls to Cousin Bush during the vote-counting.? William O?Rourke, ?Talk Radio Key to GOP Victory,? Chicago Sun-Times, December 3, 2002.
**A Fox News consultant, John Ellis, who made judgments about presidential ?calls? on Election Night admits he was in touch with George W. Bush and FL Gov. Jeb Bush by telephone several times during the night, but denies breaking any rules.CNN, November 14, 2000.
**John Ellis, the Fox consultant who called Florida early for George Bush, had to stop writing about the campaign for the Boston Globe because of family ?loyalty? to Bush. November 14, 2000 CBS News.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: ?Make sure the chairman of your campaign is also the vote countin? woman and that her state has hired a company that?s gonna knock voters off the rolls who aren?t likely to vote for you. You can usually tell them by the color of their skin.?
**?The vote total was certified by Florida's secretary of state, Katherine Harris, head of the Bush campaign in Florida, on behalf of Gov. Jeb Bush, the candidate's brother.? Mark Zoller Seitz, ?Bush Team Conveyed an Air of Legitimacy,? San Diego Union-Tribune, December 16, 2000.
**The Florida Department of State awarded a $4 million contract to the Boca Raton-based Database Technologies Inc. (subsidiary of ChoicePoint). They were tasked with finding improperly registered voters in the state?s database, but mistakes were rampant. ?At one point, the list included as felons 8,000 former Texas residents who had been convicted of misdemeanors.? St. Petersburg Times (Florida), December 21, 2003.
**Database Technologies, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint, ?was responsible for bungling an overhaul of Florida?s voter registration records, with the result that thousands of people, disproportionately black, were disenfranchised in the 2000 election. Had they been able to vote, they might have swung the state, and thus the presidency, for Al Gore, who lost in Florida. Oliver Burkeman, Jo Tuckman, ?Firm in Florida Election Fiasco Earns Millions from Files on Foreigners,? The Guardian, May 5, 2003. See also, Atlanta-Journal-Constitution, May 28, 2001.
**In 1997, Rick Rozar, the late head of the company bought by ChoicePoint, donated $100,000 to the Republican National Committee. Melanie Eversley, ?Atlanta-Based Company Says Errors in Felon Purge Not Its Fault,? Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 28, 2001. Frank Borman of Database Technologies Inc. has donated extensively to New Mexico Republicans, as well as to the Presidential campaign of George W. Bush. Opensecrets.org, ?Frank Borman.?
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: Gore got the most votes in 2000.
**[A]consortium [Tribune Co., owner of the Times; Associated Press; CNN; the New York Times; the Palm Beach Post; the St. Petersburg Times; the Wall Street Journal; and the Washington Post] hired the NORC [National Opinion Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with the University of Chicago] to view each untallied ballot and gather information about how it was marked. The media organizations then used computers to sort and tabulate votes, based on varying scenarios that had been raised during the post-election scramble in Florida. Under any standard that tabulated all disputed votes statewide, Mr. Gore erased Mr. Bush's advantage and emerged with a tiny lead that ranged from 42 to 171 votes. Donald Lambro, ?Recount Provides No Firm Answers,? Washington Times, November 12, 2001.
**?The review found that the result would have been different if every canvassing board in every county had examined every undervote, a situation that no election or court authority had ordered. Gore had called for such a statewide manual recount if Bush would agree, but Bush rejected the idea and there was no mechanism in place to conduct one.? Martin Merzer, ?Review of Ballots Finds Bush's Win Would Have Endured Manual Recount,? Miami Herald, April 4, 2001.
**See also, the following article by one of the Washington Post journalists who ran the consortium recount. The relevant point is made in Table I of the article.