Smashing secret vote counting in San Francisco, giving away the vote in New Hampshire

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_071101_smashing_secret_vote.htm


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November 1, 2007

Smashing secret vote counting in San Francisco, giving away the vote in New Hampshire

By Nancy Tobi




A real grassroots democracy depends on a free and open vote, controlled by the citizens whose interests are supposed to be represented by those elected in a free, grassroots, democracy.
But inexplicably, 81% of New Hampshire voters do not enjoy a free and open democracy. They have given away their vote to a private corporation, a private entity with a history of partisan special interests and whose management team has included a convicted embezzler, a convicted Watergate burglar mastermind, and a convicted cocaine trafficker...Yes, 81% of NH voters have given away their vote to a private corporation whose New England representative is located in Methuen, MA. 81% of New Hampshire voters have blindly handed off their civil rights to a company about which we know nothing and over which New Hampshire citizens and officials have no oversight whatsoever...These New Hampshire voters have allowed LHS Associates, New England's sole representative for Diebold Election Systems, to decide how 81% of NH ballots will be counted, using trade secret software algorithms that even NH's Secretary of State is not allowed to see!

Who are these anonymous programmers in Methuen, MA, controlling 81% of NH's votes, counting them in secret? WE DON'T KNOW WHO THEY ARE. What security procedures does this company employ to secure the purity of NH's vote count? WE DON'T KNOW. Have there been any background checks on these people controlling the NH vote count? WE DON'T KNOW. And who are the financial backers of this company that counts 81% of NH's votes in secret? WE DON'T KNOW...LHS Associates, claiming they owed nothing to NH citizens, declined to reveal information about their business and business practices requested by the NH Fair Elections Committee in March 2006.

We don't know a whole lot about the company that controls so many of our votes, but we do know a lot about US Constitution and its framers, who built and designed our form of government with a wary eye to those with power and control, and who institutionalized a system of distrust and checks and balances, based in most part on openness and observability to enable complete citizen oversight over all governmental processes...When our governmental functions are shrouded in secrecy our institutionalized distrust and checks and balances falter. When our vote - the sole instrument of citizen oversight and empowerment, short of revolution - is held hostage inside a black box owned by special interests, those checks and balances are irretrievably damaged.

And we are left to consider - blindly - what might be going on inside the black box.
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So let's consider what we do know about the private interests controlling the vast majority of NH's votes. There is one thing we do know about LHS Associates: we know that they have two lines of business.

Business #1, Programming Elections: With their first line of business, LHS Associates alone has access to and control over the secret vote
counting software that counts 81% of NH's votes.

Business #2, Collecting Census Data: With their second line of business, LHS Associates performs what is known as "data mining". They collect census data, information about who lives where, what are their incomes, their professions, their habits, their properties, their family histories.

Data mining analysis is a lucrative business for political consultants. And LHS Associates is in it up to their eyeballs. They are collecting demographic data for the neighborhoods whose votes they are counting in secret...In our relative darkness as citizens whose votes are counted without the benefit of sunshine and citizen oversight, let's consider what we know about these two lines of business. There are two ways data mining intersects with politics: the good way, and the bad way.

The good way: Political campaigns use demographic data to help them plan their canvassing activities. It helps them identify potential supporters and potential opposition voters. This helps them to use their resources most efficiently. This is the legitimate area where census data collection and political campaigns overlap.

The bad way: There is only one area where census data collection and politics as expressed in elections overlap: ELECTION FRAUD. When electronic voting is part of the picture, the matter of wholesale fraud becomes significant. In the intersection of data mining and electronic voting, it is a simple matter of finding out where the opposition votes are, and programming the vote to deal with it. For instance, in the Florida 2000 Presidential Election, ChoicePoint, a data mining company, helped out George Bush's campaign by systematically stripping out (purging) 94,000 eligible voters - all identified as Democrat-leaning - from the voter registration rolls....ChoicePoint and LHS Associates are not the only two corporations in the nation that have married the two lines of business of data mining and election programming. It's not clear how large the trend is, but large or small, the obvious conflict of interest this marriage presents is troubling. All the more so when information about these private interests never seems to see the light of day. Where are the checks? Where is the balance? Where is the citizen oversight that fulfills the vision in our Declaration of Independence:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Things don't have to be this way. If you live in a Diebold-controlled town, and you want to take back your vote, it's not so hard to do in NH. JUST DEMAND IT. For more information, see the Hands-on Elections Handbook. It's easy to do. This is our country. This is our state. This is our democracy. It's time to get off our collective butts and take it back. If you want to join us in taking back our democracy, contact the NH Fair Elections Committee at fec@democracyfornewhampshire.com.

San Francisco voters are not the only ones who should have all the fun. Let's kill Diebold in NH too.





Authors Website: www.democracyfornewhampshire.com

Authors Bio:
Nancy Tobi is the author of numerous articles on election integrity, including "The Gifts of HAVA: Time to Ask for a Refund," "What's Wrong with the Holt Bill," "We're Counting the Votes: An Election Preparedness Kit" and "Hands-on Elections: An Informational Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People." She is Legislative Coordinator of Election Defense Alliance, co-founder of Democracy for New Hampshire and Chair of the New Hampshire Fair Elections Committee. Her writings may be found at www.electiondefensealliance.org and www.democracyfornewhampshire.com
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