''537 Votes'' is an

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, 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 ba ...

original documentary 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 Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known 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 of ...

and was released in the run-up to the 2020 United States presidential election. The film premiered at the 2020 GEMS Film Festival.

Background

The

2000 United States presidential election The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. Republican candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bu ...

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

Democratic Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to: Politics *A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people. *A member of a Democratic Party: **Democratic Party (United States) (D) **Democratic ...

candidate Al Gore and

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or again ...

candidate

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

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 U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point ...

in the case ''

Bush v. Gore ''Bush v. Gore'', 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. On December 8, t ...

'', 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 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 census, making it the most populous county in Florida and the seventh-most populous county in ...

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

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American 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, and Stephen Wan ...

it has a 100% approval rating based on reviews from 8 critics, with an average rating of 7.40.10/10. In the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...

'', reviewer

Richard Roeper Richard E. Roeper (born October 17, 1959) is an American columnist and film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times''. He co-hosted the television series '' At the Movies'' with Roger Ebert from 2000 to 2008, serving as the late Gene Siskel's success ...

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, 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