I have to say I’m incredibly proud of the work we do at HDNet .
We have great people who work hard to make great shows. Tonight’s Dan Rather Reports is another great example. You can catch a Sneak Preview of the show here You can read Frazier Moore’s AP story on the show here
This is not your basic “look what we found” 12 minute segment. This is exactly what we set out to do with Dan Rather Reports. We wanted to find stories, uncover the news and report it in the best way possible. Dan’s show is normally 1 hour long. Not only will this story take up the full hour, but Dan asked for and got another 15 minutes to make sure we covered the entire story.
Fans of foes of Dan’s, or of any story related to politics will assume there was some political motivation behind the story. There isn’t. I will show you exactly where the story started with the following . There was nothing new to say until the following happened:
“A CRITICAL LEGAL DOCUMENT IN THE BATTLE OVER FLORIDA’S TOUCHSCREENS WAS FILED FAR FROM SARASOTA, HERE AT THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT IN MINNEAPOLIS, IN A CASE THAT ALMOST ONE EVEN KNOWS ABOUT.
THE CASE, BERGQUIST VERSUS HARTFORD CASUALTY, BEGAN TWO YEARS AGO. IT SEEMS AT FIRST A SIMPLE DISPUTE BETWEEN A POLICYHOLDER AND INSURANCE COMPANY OVER COVERAGE AND LIABILITY. BERGQUIST, THE COMPANY THAT MANUFACTURED THE SCREENS USED IN THE ES&S IVOTRONIC WAS SEEKING REIMBURSEMENT FOR COSTS INCURRED IN RECALLING AND REPLACING THOUSANDS OF POTENTIALLY DEFECTIVE TOUCH SCREENS, MOST IN VOTING MACHINES IN FLORIDA.
AN AFFIDAVIT IN THE CASE, RECENTLY FILED, LOOKS LIKE JUST ONE MORE DOCUMENT IN A MOUNTAIN OF COURT PAPERS. BUT THE AFFIDAVIT OF DR. PATRICIA DUNN, A FORMER MATERIAL SCIENTIST FOR THE BERGQUIST COMPANY, WAS A BOMBSHELL.
PATRICIA DUNN’S EXPERIMENTS AT BERGQUIST SUGGESTED THAT MORE SCREENS WOULD GO OUT OF CALIBRATION OVER TIME, ESPECIALLY IN HUMID PLACES…. LIKE FLORIDA.
ACCORDING TO DUNN, IN 2002 SHE URGED A RECALL OF MANY BERGQUIST SCREENS FROM MANILA…BUT COURT EXHIBITS SUGGEST IT WAS REPORTS IN 2003 OF SCREEN PROBLEMS IN LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA THAT WAS THE TIPPING POINT FOR MANAGEMENT AT BERGQUIST, ES&S AND PIVOT.
Thats the start of it. From there Dan will take you to the factories in Manilla where voting machines were made to show you why and how there will problems. He interviews the people involved who raised the issues, to no avail. Then he follows the problems from Manilla to Minnesota and beyond.
And thats just the start of the story.
check it out tonight at 8pm or 11pm EST