''537 Votes'' is an

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

original

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed by

Billy Corben William Cohen (born 1978), better known by the stage name Billy Corben, is an American documentary film director. Along with producing partner Alfred Spellman, he is co-founder of the Miami-based studio Rakontur, which has created films such as ' ...

and released on October 21, 2020. The documentary discusses the controversial

2000 United States presidential election in Florida The 2000 United States presidential election in Florida took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the nationwide presidential election. Florida, a swing state, had a major recount dispute that took center stage in the election. The outcome o ...

and was released in the run-up to the

2020 United States presidential election United States presidential election, Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 3, 2020. The Democratic Party (United States), Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and California junior senator Kamala H ...

. The film premiered at the 2020 GEMS Film Festival.

Background

The

2000 United States presidential election United States presidential election, Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 7, 2000. Republican Party (United States), Republican Governor George W. Bush of Texas, the eldest son of 41st President George H. W. Bush, ...

came down to the state of Florida, in which the margin between Democratic candidate

Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American former politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as ...

and Republican candidate

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

was incredibly narrow. The election was left un-decided during a controversial series of recounts in Florida, which after being stopped by the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

in the case ''

Bush v. Gore ''Bush v. Gore'', 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W ...

'', eventually resulted in Bush winning with a margin of 537 votes in the state. ''537 Votes'' focuses particularly on the election in

Miami-Dade County, Florida Miami-Dade County () is a County (United States), county located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. The county had a population of 2,701,767 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the most populous coun ...

, an important political battleground during the election and at the epicenter of the recount.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

it has a 100% approval rating based on reviews from 8 critics, with an average rating of 7.40/10. In the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily nonprofit newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has long held the second largest circulation among Chicago newspaper ...

'', reviewer

Richard Roeper Richard E. Roeper (born October 17, 1959) is an American writer. He is a former columnist and film critic for the '' Chicago Sun-Times'', where he wrote for 39 years dating back to 1986 until his departure in 2025. He co-hosted the television s ...

gave the documentary a positive review, writing that it "does a brilliant job of laying out the facts, providing invaluable background on late 20th century politics in iami-Dade County and praising its inclusion of interviews with reporters and political operatives, as well as its use of archival footage. Writing for

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

, Brian Lowry notes that the film was released shortly before the 2020 United States presidential election, where similar concerns existed. Lowry writes that the documentary "provides a contextual, nuanced view", and notes that the primary message of the documentary is that while Gore's representative focused on "decorum and democracy", Republicans won the election, and that Democrats "brought the equivalent of a strongly worded letter to a knife fight".

References

External links

*{{IMDb title, tt13128292 Films about the 2000 United States presidential election HBO documentary films 2020 documentary films 2020 films Films directed by Billy Corben 2020s English-language films 2020s American films English-language documentary films