As a friend once told me: Florida is good for only two things: college football and botched elections.
        After flipping on HBO’s ``Recount’’ Sunday night, and watching a masterful portrayal of the contested 2000 presidential election, with memories returning like a bad check about hanging chads, dimpled-ballots, voter intent, undervotes, every one of Florida’s 67 counties having different procedures for recounting punch-card ballots, who in this country has the right to yell foul about rigged elections in Zimbabwe, and several former Soviet republics.
        Personally, I was embarrassed even more so than eight years ago, wondering how could so many dunderheads be put in charge of supervising elections; and as an American I was even more embarrassed that the U.S. Supreme Court put the kibosh on the recount on grounds there wasn’t enough time to conduct a statewide recount to meet a fast approaching deadline.
        With the presidency hanging in the balance, what was the rush? Wasn’t it more important to ensure voter accuracy before deciding who won Florida?
        I wish the federal government had the same reverence for deadlines when it came time to send out the stimulus checks earlier this month. 
        Robert W. Gordon, professor of law and legal history at Yale University, writing through an email, observed ``their [The U.S. Supreme Court’s] rationale for stopping the recount [in Gore vs Bush] was absurd.  It was that the recount couldn’t be finished before the state's deadline for reporting votes.  But that deadline is just a safeharbor, Gordon wrote, not a final deadline.  In the Nixon-Kennedy election of 1960, some states were still recounting votes well into January.’’
        In ``Recount’’, Kevin Spacey, who by the way, turned in a brilliant (some already saying Emmy winning) performance as Al Gore’s dogged chief of staff, Ron Klain, didn’t seem overly concerned when he first learned the Bush campaign had appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the recount. Klain’s lack of concern seemed legally sound: The constitution leaves disputed elections in the hands of states and the U.S Congress. Imagine the Gore campaign's shock when a stay was granted, putting an immediate halt to the recount as ruled by the Florida Supreme Court.
        Which brings us to the question whether the court had a legal right to resolve this issue?
        Professor Gordon pointed out a `` political process is laid out for resolving impasses in the Congress.  These are in short issues of state law, and issues for political resolution, not for the federal courts.   In any other case, the conservative majority on the Court would have refused to accept jurisdiction.’’
        Lucas A. Powe, professor of law at the University of Texas, and a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, wrote that he was `unaware of any serious person who thinks the Court didn't have the legal right to decide the case.  A number believe the Court should not have heard the case, and I think a vast majority of legal scholars believe the Court decided it wrongly.  I am one of the latter.’’
        George Stephanopolous ``thought it [``Recount’’] was a terrific film...quite true to life....In my personal opinion, the This Week host wrote through an email:``I thought the minority in Bush v Gore had the better argument’’
        The exceptional acting in ``Recount’’ matched the flawless casting, in addition to Spacey, Tom Wilkinson eerily resembled James A. Baker III, the Bush operative who successfully led the campaign to block the recount, Ed Begley Jr reproducing the subtle gestures of Gore’s dyslexic lawyer David Boies was brilliant; and Laura Dern nimbly walked the tight rope of portraying Katherine Harris as a flighty, out-of-touch Secretary of State, but who nonetheless fearlessly stepped to the plate when having to make a call about certifying the election ballots.
        I only had one minor disappointment about Sunday’s night drama. When the historic 5-4 decision was handed down on December 12th at approximately 10: p.m., the directors would have been better off if they had used a real-life panoramic of all the TV networks reaction when they had their legal correspondents opening up the brief.
          It was really quite dramatic, much more so than the fictionalized depiction. I remember Brian Williams, in particular, as host of MSNBC, when first getting word that the decision was about to be released, saying something like  ``it’s like an expectant father waiting to hear if it’s a boy or girl’’. The real drama came when it took the networks several minutes to make their way through the 65-page document detailing six separate opinions, before realizing the court had overturned the Florida Supreme Court’s mandatory recount by a 5-4 decision, officially ending the counting of disputed ballots, and thereby handing the election to George W. Bush as the 43rd chief executive of the United States.
        Is there a lesson to be learned from this historic election fiasco?
        Yes.
        The only thing you can count on in Florida is the final score of college football games.
        -Bill Lucey
         billlucey@bellsouth.net