Someone far smarter than I should pursue this -- but I've become increasingly convinced that someone needs to make a smart, accessible and entertaining documentary debunking this 'Stop the Steal' nonsense once and for all.
Films have a way of being the last word on history -- for better or worse. And a popular film with some real teeth and data, could help move the needle, at least a little. And I think this conspiracy theory needs to be debunked now with more of a sense of urgency or a certain portion of our population will believe the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen for a generation, and that is perilous for the shred of democracy we have left.
For better or worse, JFK (albeit, far from a documentary) permanently shifted opinions about the assassination of the former president. And say what you will about Michael Moore, his films have opened minds on gun control, health care and the legacy of the Bush administration. An Inconvenient Truth clearly brought awareness of climate change more into the mainstream and so on and so on.
It's for this reason, I presume, that Adam McKay has sought out a huge A-list cast to headline an upcoming film that has some political themes -- which I welcome. And we need someone with wit and style to tackle this topic because believing the 2020 election was 'stolen' is not just wrong, it's ludicrously stupid.
All the information is out there for anyone who cares to read it or hear it. There were no significant numbers of "dead people voting" -- the few discrepancies that were found were almost all honest mistakes and not at all on the level that would swing an election.
There is no evidence of machines flipping "millions of votes" from Trump to Biden (and somehow, miraculously not down ballot races) and we know this because we have paper ballot back-ups that verify this and the equipment the right has been fear mongering about for months (because it was manufactured in Venezuela) was only used in one county in California, not in a single one of the swing states whose results they question.
Votes didn't just start magically appear post-election day. In several states, GOP legislatures required the record number of mail-in ballots due to COVID (thanks, Trump) be counted last and because the former president spent months disparaging this method of voting, they disproportionately skewed towards Biden. These were not new votes, these were votes that had YET TO BE COUNTED on election night.
Only a child would think that presidents are determined and declared based on who has a lead at midnight on election night - and of course, these same voters want to ignore Biden's lead in Arizona at the same time.
Clearly, there is a portion of the public who will always remain willfully ignorant about these facts, just as there are millions of Americans who believe the Clintons have a 'kill list' and that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. But then there are a lot of other Americans, low information folks, who are persuadable and need to be persuaded.
It's clear that mythological voter fraud has taken hold as the new boogeyman for a lot of citizens out there and this paranoia will lead (and already has) to draconian legislation providing solutions in search of a non existent problem, that will only curtail more people's access to the ballot, which could have dangerous results.
I think now is a time where Hollywood could and should marshal their considerable resources and influence to tip the scales in the direction of truth.
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