Uncounted: The New Math Of American Elections DVD Review

Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections is a documentary film that takes a look back at the elections of 2000 and 2004. The film rehashes what has already been discussed thoroughly regarding the voting issues in states like Florida and Ohio, citing the involvement local government officials as well as private citizens in the overall outcome and subsequent election to place George W. Bush into the White House.

The film does an excellent job of reiterating the outrage and disappointment of the citizens, particularly those in areas that are more skewed more to the Democratic party. Uncounted nicely glosses over the involvement of elected officials, including the weight and swayable Katherine Harris, and the influential Jeb Bush, brother of would be President Elect George W. Bush, narrowly winning over Vice President Al Gore. The film also revisits these issues in regard to the 2004 election, when it once again appeared that the election was in question as to its integrity of its votes and eventual outcome as George W. Bush once again won by a narrow margin over Democratic candidate John Kerry.

Despite this rehashing of past elections, the film primarily focuses on the flaws of the voting process, namely that of electronic voting or E-Votes. Uncounted asserts that the concept of electronic voting, particularly that in current employ, is flawed. The current system completely lacks a system of checks and balances. It does not print off a paper copy, even, for the voter to take home as proof that their vote was counted appropriately.

Making matters worse for the E-Vote cause are whistleblowers like computer programmer turned politician Clint Curtis who has sworn before a grand jury that he was asked in 2001 by his then employer Yang Enterprises International to create an electronic voting system that the Republican party could use to “flip” the votes in need be. Essentially what they wanted was a façade of electronic infallibility but with a secret back door method of altering the votes if necessary, to hand the election over to the Republican party. Mr. Curtis complied, believing, according to him, that he was being asked to create a system of proof that these machines were imperfect, but he soon discovered that a few members of the party intended on using these machines as a back up fail safe in case the election did not go in the direction they wanted.

Other whistle blowers include Bruce Funk, an elected official in Utah who noticed a flaw in the system, simply tried to contact the manufacturer and was subsequently fired for his actions.

Uncounted is an important and poignant film meant to open the eyes of the viewers who may have honestly believed that their electoral process is perfect. The film is fair, well organized and thorough and is one of the better documentaries seen in quite a while.

The DVD release of Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, includes the feature length film, present in anamorphic widescreen format. The DVD also includes number of bonus features including more than 60 additional minutes of footage. This additional footage is comprised up of deleted scenes as well as extended interviews and speeches.