Stealing America: Vote by Vote in HMB Saturday

At 7:30 pm on Saturday September 27 The Visionary Edge will host a screening of the documentary Stealing America: Vote by Vote at the Ted Adcock Community Center, 525 Kelly Ave, Half Moon Bay.

Narrated by Peter Coyote, directed and produced by Menlo Park filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman of Concentric Media, Stealing America employs first-person accounts, extensive research and telling clips gleaned from the nightly news.  Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated social issue filmmaker Fadiman shines a spotlight on the gritty reality of the last decade’s most egregious incidents of U.S. electoral insecurity.

Says Fadiman "Making Stealing America became a mission.  Why? It can all be distilled into the words with which I open the film: ‘The right to vote … is the primary right by which other rights are protected.’ from Thomas Paine."

The last two presidential elections both came down to a relatively small number of votes, and in both elections the integrity of the voting process has been called into question.  With the upcoming election looking to be similarly close, the time has come to ask the questions:  what happened in 2000 and 2004; what has changes since; and what can be done to ensure a fair and honest tabulation of votes in 2008?

Stealing America: Vote by Vote brings together behind-the-scenes perspectives from the U.S. presidential election of 2004 = plus startling stories from key races in 1996, 2000, 2002 and 2006.  Unbiased and nonpartisan, the film sheds light on a decade of cote counts that don’t match votes cast – uncounted ballots, vote switching, under=votes and many other examples of election totals that warrant serious investigation.

Throughout Stealing America , we hear from voters who experienced a wide range of problems, including those whose votes flipped from one candidate to another and those whose polls didn’t have enough machines to serve the number of voters.  Investigative journalists describe how their reportage on election fraud was sidelined.  First-person citizen testimonials speak of waiting in line nine hours to vote.  We hear how polling experts’ requests for essential information – such as precinct voting data necessary to examine irregularities – had been rejected, while ballots were being systematically destroyed, making audits impossible.

In an effort to create the least biased and most balanced picture of the contentious issue, filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman has called upon experts from across the political spectrum, including:

Bob Hagan - Ohio State Senator and first-hand witness to on-screen vote switching.

Paul Craig Roberts – Economist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan and sometimes called the "Father of Reagonomics."  He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Scripps Howard News Service,

And is at present a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – Activist, author, environmental lawyer and co-host of Ring of Fire on the Air America Radio Network.

Charles Lewis – Investigative journalist and former 60 Minutes producer, founder og Center for Public Integrity.

Bruce O’Dell and Chuck Herrin – Fortune 100 company computer security analysts.

Greg Palast – BBC investigative journalist whose reportage on the issue made the front page in U.K. and Europe, but was suppressed in the U.S.

Dr. Avi Rubin – Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Ion Sancho – Leon County Supervisor of Elections.  Appointed by the Florida Supreme Court to count the votes in the disputed 2000 presidential election, Sancho blazed a trail in proving that it is possible to "hack" into voting machines and change the totals.

Dr. Jonathan Simon – Data analyst, who has been focusing on exit poll discrepancies.

John Zogby – International polling authority.

Dr. Victoria Lovegren – Senior-level data architect and systems analyst Case Western Reserve.

Stealing America unveils patterns of anomalies at every level of the electoral process.  Controversial partnerships perpetuate a secretive environment, as relevant facts and figures remain hidden from view.  As a result, most Americans have no real sense of the threat to free and fair elections.  As seemingly unrelated pieces of the puzzle come together, a chilling picture emerges of widespread, artfully crafted "glitches" that, in the final tallies, have the capacity to alter election results.

Says Fadiman "I am keenly aware that film, as a medium, including documentary films, holds the potential to open people’s eyes, taking them beyond their usual ways of seeing the world.  As a filmmaker, I use this opportunity (as carefully as I can) to introduce audiences to new realities.  With Stealing America I learned that most Americans think elections are basically fair.  After watching this film, they will discover more than they might have ever imagined about voter disenfranchisement and the fact that voting machines are vulnerable to manipulation.  Hearing these stories told in the first-person by those who suffered through them, viewers will learn about and experience the shadow side of our current electoral process."

According to Reba Vanderpool, founder of The Visionary Edge, "No matter which side a voter is on, we all have the right to free and fair elections.  Because of the importance of this issue to all Americans, The Visionary Edge is donating this film to the community."

Saturday, September 27th.  Doors will open at 7:00pm, film begins at 7:30.  Johnson House Depot, HMB.  No charge, donations welcome. Please call for seat reservations 650-560-0200. 

Located in Half Moon Bay, The Visionary Edge produces events to inform and inspire us all to create a wiser, sustainable and more compassionate world.