HBO's 537 Votes ties the 2000 Florida recount to the Elian González case

The Hollywood Reporter

Billy Corben's new HBO documentary offers "a solid recontextualizing of the saga of undervotes, hanging chads and Supreme Court high jinks you think you understand and remember, all through Corben's Floridian perspective," says Daniel Fienberg. The documentary demonstrates how the controversy over 5-year-old Cuban boy Elian González, who was found in 1999 floating in an inner tube three miles off the Florida coast, likely led to Al Gore losing Florida and thus the 2000 presidential election. "It's a basic context that I've certainly heard before and one that prevents the eventual electoral showdown from feeling like an arbitrary incident, but I don't know that I've seen/heard it laid out as clearly and unimpeachably as Corben does here," says Fienberg. "With the help of local political and media figures, he connects a lot of dots, with many lines crossing through Penelas — utterly eviscerated here for over 100 minutes — and particularly through Armando Gutierrez, the local judicial kingmaker who also made himself indispensable as spokesman for Elian Gonzalez's Florida relatives." ALSO: 537 Votes explains American politics' descent into bloodsport.