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Author Message   Nancy Tobi Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Ntobi Post Number: 471 Registered: 1-2006 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 Posted on Friday, July 31, 2009 - 7:36 am:    ES&S is serviced by LHS Associates. They eradicated the last 25 ES&S machines in NH when LHS "consulted" (colluded) with then Chair of NH Legislative Ctte on Election Law, Don Stritch, and the NH Secretary of State, to redesign NH ballots in 2005. This led to LHS informing the state the ES&S machines could no longer read the newly designed ballots, and that the Diebold scanners required a firmware "upgrade" from the older version to the version used to rob Al Gore of Florida's votes (Diebold counted negative votes for Al). This single piece of legislation - ballot redesign - reaped LHS Associates at least $150K (if not more) to replace ES&S machines with Diebold and install new firmware throughout the state. The benefits to controlling NH elections via Diebold's fraud-friendly systems are inestimable. I would expect the same strategy to be imposed at some point in time in Maine. It is ever so much easier to "manage" elections using only Diebold after all. I don't mean to take a wholesale swipe at Maine, per se. They did take the lead in public campaign financing. Good for them! They - in STARK CONTRAST TO NH - took action when their laughable ballot chain of custody was revealed with the discover of their recount rigging scheme. And, as you point out, their public records laws are good. The response from the NH Sec of State to our public records requests was to raise the fee from 15 cents to 1 dollar per page, effectively quashing any more investigation into their office. I also suspect they are behind the ploy to remove agencies from the public records law, a bill that did not pass this time around, but we can just wait on that. My experience in NH has been edifying. It is so easy to fall in love with our wonderful New England community-based hand count elections that one can be easily distracted from the monster hiding in the lagoon. That monster is privatized elections and concealed vote counting for the majority of our voters. I suspect the same holds true for Maine. I think we should target Maine for Protect the Count next time around. We'll see what is what. Any good activists in Maine up to the task??? NH Protect the Count 2008 Election: http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/6273

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