LHS Associates - A History of Following Their Own 'Laws'
Late last year, I reported on a recorded interview I'd had with LHS's director of Sales and Marketing, Ken Hajjar, who admitted that the company routinely replaces both voting machines, and vulnerable memory cards, during elections.
Despite such replacements against strict laws in Connecticut, Hajjar told me, "I mean, I don't pay attention to every little law. It's just, it's up to the Registrars. All we are is a support organization on Election Day."
He described keeping three memory cards in the trunk of his car during elections and, in the event they had to be used, he argued, the chain of custody issues wouldn't matter since, "once you run the [pre-election] test deck through, you're golden."
"We would have a whole bunch of machines in the trunk in the car and we hope the phone doesn't ring, but if it does somebody tells us where to go, we replace the machine and then we go on our merry way," he told me last year.
Hajjar was recently barred from working on elections in the state of Connecticut by the Secretary of State, after objectionable and profane remarks he had made publicly in the comments section of The BRAD BLOG.
More recently, a public records request made by BlackBoxVoting.org revealed that Hajjar had plead guilty to narcotics trafficking in the state of New Hampshire in 1990.
Another LHS official, Mike Carlson, similarly confirmed the company's practice of replacing voting systems during Election Day in Connecticut despite state laws that ban such practices, during an interview I had with him in late 2006. The audio and transcription of that interview are available here.
Confusion About the Law Among New Hampshire Officials
An investigation into New Hampshire's voting machines would likely reveal a lack of consistency in reporting on voting machine problems and Election Day voting machine repairs. Officials at the polls clearly have the impression that the vendor, LHS, is a legitimate source for official guidance on addressing mid-election problems. Yet, at the state level, officials with legal oversight over voting machines are not aware of the seriousness of the repairs, or in some cases that they are even occurring. Consider this exchange with Jim Kennedy, Deputy Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire, on January 11, 2008.
Dep. Atty Gen. Kennedy: There is also security protocols...There are locks and seals that go on these machines during the day and actually our office conducted inspections throughout election day to insure that the seals were properly on the machines.
Smith: But what if, say, a memory card were to fail during the election and LHS were to come in and put in a different one?
Kennedy: That's not what's done in the State of New Hampshire. Actually by state and federal law we are required to retain the actual memory card that's used in the election. So to interchange a memory card I think would be odd.
Smith: I mean to replace it so the machine could be used.
Kennedy: I don't know of any circumstance that that's occurred here.
Smith: What about during set up if the card is tested and fails and so LHS is able to just send out a new one.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
