HBO brought the very hazy voting results from Florida’s “hanging chads” in the Gore v. Bush 2000 presidential election into vivid focus by recreating the experience in a bi-coastal demonstration on Tuesday.
Votomatic portable voting “booths” used in that election were set up to excite interest in “Recount: The story of the 2000 Presidential Election,” in mock polling stands on Tuesday in New York City’s politically historic Union Square and at the Grove in Los Angeles. The program is HBO’s original historic drama about the election.
For voters who can cast their imaginations back to that time when the republic seemed poised to unravel over those hanging “chads”—paper ballot punch-outs that weren’t punched fully through – it was a disconcerting exercise in virtual democracy.
The scene in a rain swept Union Square oddly conveyed the right ambience for the reenactment. Voters of all ages seemed confused by the paper ballots with the famously puzzling “butterfly” display of close-set presidential candidates’ names. Most, but not all, of the small cheap fluorescent lights in the dozen collapsible tin voting stalls worked.
The machines all had printed signs saying, ‘Legal time limit for voting booth 5 minutes.’
It was reality imitating reality—ala HBO’s retelling of the election when the guy who won the most popular votes was the loser. Reactions to the exercise were decidedly mixed, but it was easy to imagine the frustration of voters who waited hours on long lines to punch their chads on these port-o-polling CES Votomatics.
Near one corner of the bright red-white-and-blue “Recount” tent, the odor of what might be best described as the unsavory aroma of dirty politics wafted from a cesspool grill several feet away—just an unintended bi-product of this demonstration of the paper-thin margins of democratic reality.
After the president’s brother, Gov. Jed Bush, summarily outlawed the voting contraptions after the election debacle, county election boards tried to pitch the Votomatics on eBay with negligible success. That’s how Civic Entertainment Group grabbed Votomatics in volume for the bi-coastal demonstration.
“We were all pretty intrigued by those notorious icons, the paper ballots and the ‘hanging chads’,” said Zach Enterlin, HBO vice president of advertising and promotions. “It seemed like an opportunity to take a closer look.”
So after collaborating with HBO on the concept, CEG bought one genuine Votomatic—complete with clods of chads collected in it—to inspect the real McCoy.
“We bought one just to see what it was like, and when it arrived, we shook chads out of it,” Spencer Rice, CEG vice president, said.
CEG then cut the deal for a couple dozen of the unwanted chad punchers from the Palm Beach County Board of Elections for an undisclosed price about six weeks ago.
“They were surprisingly inexpensive,” Rice recalls.
CEG’s team handed out approximately 5,000 of the infamous Florida ballots by mid-afternoon on Tuesday, with a few hours still left for any stragglers. They also handed out about 2,000 packs of “Recount” ‘player’ cards featuring cast members Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary pictured on cards that provided career summaries on the heavy—and light—political hitters portrayed in the HBO drama.
CEG anticipated a stronger turnout at the LA reenactment, with sunny skies as a contrast to the dreary New York backdrop. The choice of the two largest cities in the two consistently “blue” states happily coincided with posting the mock polling stations at prime locales in the nation’s two largest urban markets to draw big crowds.
Along with the hanging chads, HBO is breaking out rich media banner ads online featuring video trailers on http://www.Salon.com and other politically conscious sites. The HBO original gets a replay on Monday night after its Sunday primetime debut, with a fall revival a seeming certainty.
Meanwhile, the demos may have heated the tepid market for Votomatics, which seem destined to go the way of the Veg-o-matic any day now.
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