Please forward this to anybody you know who cares at all about fair
labor practices and accurate and fair public elections.
An explosive Dan Rather report "Trouble With Touchscreens" will
premiere on HDNet tomorrow (Tuesday) night. It features the history
and problems of the ES&S iVotronic voting machine now used in 25
Pennsylvania counties, including Allegheny, Westmoreland, Butler,
Beaver, Cambria, Centre, Chester, Luzerne, and more.
Here is a 13-minute video preview:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1826549866685179676&hl=en
This is a "MUST WATCH" -- footage and interviews on the sweatshop in
the Philippines where the iVotronics are made by near-slaves earning
$2.15 to $2.50 per day! Problems with the machines are attributed to
manufacturing conditions including 90-plus degree assembly areas with
no air conditioning or even fans, and 50 dump truck loads of " cats,
and rats, and snakes, and all types of debris" removed from a basement
inventory area.
candidate who "lost" her Congressional race by less than 400 votes,
with over 18,000 undervotes inexplicably missing in that contest on the
ES&S iVotronic machines in Sarasota County, FL last fall.
This amazing report will air on HDNet tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 8 PM
but will be repeated multiple times over the coming days and weeks.
Link to schedule and other copies of the video preview:
http://www.hd.net/danrather.html#
As the preview segment shows, ES&S has done offshore manufacturing via
Pivot International, a contract product manufacturing company with
headquarters in Lenexa, Kanas that uses manufacturing facilities in the
Philippines (It also subcontracts work to China.)
"If you go into almost any plant in the non-developed countries of the
Far East, you're going to see things that OSHA or EPA would shut down
tomorrow," says Kirk Douglass, CEO of Pivot International, in a June 1,
2002 article in Industry Week.
http://www.industryweek.com/CurrentArticles/asp/articles.asp?
ArticleID=1262
Pivot International apparently has a Pittsburgh Connection. Kirk
Douglass received a Masters of Science degree in Industrial
Administration from CMU and then was connected to PPG, according to a
2001 article in Kansas City Small Business Monthly. The article says
that it was while working in the Philippines for part of PPG's
Biomedical Systems Division that Douglass met the "Ching" character
mentioned in Dan Rather's report, and apparently the two of them
subsequently bought the makings of Pivot International from PPG:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020624145810/http://kcsmallbiz.com/2001/
january/KCE_0101.htm
Why, why, WHY did so so many of our supposedly pro-union officials vote
to buy these sweatshop-made machines, including Democrats like Dan
Onorato, John DeFazio, and others?
Labor day is coming up soon.
WE CAN & MUST GET THIS INFORMATION & MESSAGE OUT.
Electronic voting without voter-verified paper ballots and audits of
all elections is deadly dangerous to our democracy. And it is pretty
darn inhuman when it comes to fair labor practices as well.
Marybeth
