This weekend I watched a movie named Recount. (HBO movie…which I got through Netflix). Ok, my take on it may have been skewed by my political views and my work in this new media field…..but guess what - the history of the United States for the last 8 years may have all come down to a choice of fonts!

You may remember at the time that there was a question of many people in Florida having punched the wrong selection - voting for Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Al Gore. But did you know that the ballot was confusing because of a concern that putting all the candidates in a row on one side of the ballot would mean a smaller font that might be harder to read? So instead, the candidate names were on both sides of the ballot. Now at the time I thought this was silly, until I saw the machines they were using in the movie - both slots for punching the ballot were beside Al Gore’s name AND Buchannan - you had to know whether to choose one or two in between the two names.

Just think, a choice for a smaller font may have driven the history of the world in a very different direction!

Fascinating movie by the way - Recount with Kevin Spacey

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