Reply #23: Amen to that! This background on LHS leaves me w/o confidence:

[mod mom]

In last week’s program LHS President John Silvestro admitted his staff violated Connecticut security protocols during the 2006 election. Memory cards were swapped by LHS staff members who saw protocols from the State indicating they were not to touch machines. Still, Silvestro touts the benefits of privatizing Connecticut’s election to his company that sells Diebold products. He said: ‘–I feel very confident in the fact that the process itself is better left in the private venue than it is in the public venue when I see the influence that each political party can put on people and make things happen in this country, whether right or wrong. I mean if you think about it. I would ask you the same way. Would you like politically connected people to both parties to be in charge of running the process of creating voting machines, counting ballots, and you know, would you like that? I don’t know.’

Silvestro attended an August meeting to correct security problems his staff caused when they swapped memory cards in violation of the Secretary of State’s protocols. The problem would be solved, he offers, by automatically auditing any machine that fails during a vote. Will his ideas work? And even if they are good solutions, what should we make of his role in providing Connecticut elections?

Throughout our year long investigation LHS staff members have tended to say things that reveal either confusion about State protocols or an unwillingness to accept direction from the Secretary of State, Susan Bysiewicz. In this comment from 2006 LHS Director of Sales and Marketing, Ken Hajjar, admits he saw the written protocol from Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz indicating he was not to handle voting machines or obviously memory cards.

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http://talknationradio.com/?p=101

He also said, “I feel very confident that the process itself is better left in the private thing than it is in the public venue when I see the influence that each political party can put on people and make things happen in this country whether right or wrong, I mean if you think about it and I’d ask you the same way. Would you like politically connected people to vote parties, to be in charge of running you know the process of creating voting machines, counting ballots and you know would you like that? I don’t know.”

Silvestro has been a politician for years in the town of Londonderry New Hampshire where they use the voting machines his company sells. The SEEC will have to evaluate the twin histories of Diebold and LHS Associates, to fully understand their behavior under contract with Connecticut. Perhaps the SEEC can assist poll workers who will now have to identify just which protocols the state intends to have on site during upcoming elections.

http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/general_news/connecticuts_elections_are_sti.php

Jeffrey Dean, Senior Vice President of Diebold, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, of planting back doors in his software, and of using a “high degree of sophistication” to evade detection over a period of 2 years.” While heading up the development of Diebold’s GEMS controversial central compiler software source code at Global Election Systems (later, purchased by Diebold, and renamed Diebold Election Systems), convicted felon, Jeffrey Dean, worked in association with John Silvestro, Owner and CEO of LHS Associates of Methuen, MA, which maintains, pre-programs and configures the voting machines and memory cards of five New England States, including New Hampshire.*

· Diebold Election Systems is under tremendous scrutiny nationwide for sales of voting systems proven to be highly vulnerable and easily hackable by anyone from a teenager to a terrorist. Diebold CEO, Walden O’Dell, recently resigned, Diebold shareholders and numerous others have filed suit, and contracts for Diebold voting systems sales and services are in question, and being canceled, throughout the country.

· According to Peter Phillips, Director of Project Censored,“Diebold hired Scientific Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego to develop the software security in their voting machines.”

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http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/2420