Hanging chads hit Hollywood

An official examines a ballot during the 2000 US election scandal, now being turned into a film
An official examines a ballot during the 2000 US election scandal, now being turned into a film. Photograph: Alan Diaz/AP
The botched Florida election that put George Bush in the White House and introduced the world to the butterfly ballot and the hanging chad is to be immortalised by Hollywood.

Oscar winner Sydney Pollack has been hired to direct the film Recount, which will look at events in the Sunshine State during the weeks after the controversial 2000 presidential election, in which 175,000 Floridians saw their votes rejected and Bush was declared the winner over Al Gore by a 537-vote margin.

Despite Tinseltown's notable leftwing leanings, the film will be fair to both the Republicans and the defeated Democrats, according to Colin Callender, president of Home Box Office (HBO), which plans to release the movie next spring.

"It doesn't take sides. It's a fascinating look at democracy where the rubber meets the road," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "It's a very compelling piece that takes a well-known event and deconstructs it from the point of view of the people involved."

The month-long scandal made Florida, and the US, an international laughing-stock. Even Saddam Hussein, long criticised by successive American presidents for failing to hold a free and fair vote in Iraq, reportedly offered to send election observers to sort out the mess.

Weeks of recounts and legal challenges followed polling on November 7 before the US Supreme Court stepped in on December 9 to declare the process unconstitutional and award Bush the presidency.

Florida's election procedures were widely mocked in the interim, with controversy over old-fashioned double-sided paper ballot slips and the validity of hanging, swinging and dimpled chads where voters had failed to fully punch through a hole to mark their choice.

Beside Bush and Gore, the cast list includes many other characters brought to prominence by the debacle, including the Florida governor Jeb Bush, who was accused of handing the state and ultimately the White House to his brother, and Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state, a Republican who failed to win a seat in the US Senate last November.

Pollack won best picture and best director Oscars for the 1985 film Out of Africa. Recount's script was written by actor Danny Strong, whose credits includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He said the film would include the stories of voters from both sides of the political divide because he wanted to explore the drama of ordinary people caught up in one of the biggest political scandals of all time.

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