Sorry, Florida, but Even Bobbleheads Found Voting Easy
The PR team for HBO's weekend movie Recount, the surprisingly politically noncontroversial movie about the tumultuous 2000 Florida presidential vote recount, has come up with an ingenious way to promote the flick:
See if non-Floridians can use the same Votomatic machines without running into problems. Here at Whispers, we got ours on Friday, still filled with those famous chads. It's a real machine stamped with the Palm Beach County label and everything. We were encouraged to use it and tell the world what we found. Well, Whispers decided to let our famed Capitol Bobbleheads give it a try.
But first, here were our initial impressions of the machine. What a mess! Wobbly on four aluminum tubes. Next, the candidate names don't really line up with the hole we're supposed to punch, though that's really just a guide. But the card? OMG. The demonstrator had 228 holes to punch. Granted, only about 10 are to be used, but it's slightly intimidating, and for those with worse eyes than ours, it would be horrible.
So how did our gang do? Well, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama voted for Al Gore. No hanging chads. Sen. John McCain voted for George Bush. No hanging chads. Easy? Somewhat, once they were able to get the little pin into the hole to punch the chad. But it took a while, a situation made tenser by the red-lettered bumper sticker on the back of the machine screaming: LEGAL TIME LIMIT FOR VOTING BOOTH IS 5 MINUTES.
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Reader Comments
HBO & US NEWS ALSO GOT IT WRONG
Either your ballot card was not inserted properly for voting, or the voting unit was not prepared properly for voting by the film makers. Take another look at the REAL voting unit from 2000:
http://www2.indystar.com/library/factfiles/gov/politics/election2000/img/prezrace/butterfly_large.jpg)
Notice the single column of the ballot that is exposed through the mask and how that makes the facing pages align to the corresponding holes. Also note the very large black arrows that point from the candidate names to the proper hole to punch. If you're really that confused by how to vote this ballot, I suggest you surrender your driver's license immediately and move into an assisted living facility so that others can help you with the most basic of directions.
Fun, but not the same...
Yes, it's a cute promo tool. But, this is not the same set-up that was used during 2000. The "butterfly ballot" design would only allow punching in one column at a time, you would turn the page to vote the next column. You would not be able to see the whole ballot at the same time, just in case y'all forgot!
Easy?
Am I missing something here? "Sorry, Florida, but Even Bobbleheads Found Voting Easy" doesn't agree with the text of the story, in my book.
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