‘Stop the Recount’: How the Chaotic End of the 2000 Presidential Election Sowed Seeds of Today’s Political Fury

variety.com:

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor On the night of the 2000 presidential election, as the counting began in a tight race between Texas Gov.

George W. Bush and incumbent Vice President Al Gore, it all came down to Florida. And then, all hell broke loose. Director Jay Roach and writer Danny Strong captured the stakes and the personalities that drove that strange moment in “Recount,” the Emmy-winning 2008 HBO movie starring Denis Leary, Kevin Spacey, Bob Balaban and Laura Dern.

Instead of “Stop the Steal,” the rally cry in 2000 for Bush supporters was “Stop the Recount.” “The events in ‘Recount’ were in some way a rehearsal for January 6,” Roach says. “It proved that there was potential to physically disrupt an election.” As the nation braces for what will surely be a long night of waiting for election returns, it’s eye-opening to revisit the chaos that ensued for five weeks while Bush and Gore went to war over how the votes were counted (and recounted and not recounted) in Florida. “Electile Dysfunction,” Daily Variety declared in its Nov.

9, 2000, edition. A quarter-century ago, the onset of the Bush v. Gore legal fight felt as unprecedented and unsettling as the events of the 2024 presidential campaign have been for so many this year. “There have been so many efforts to undermine our faith in elections since then,” Roach says. “It’s depressing.” After the major TV networks called Florida for Bush shortly before 8 p.m.