Does the Secretary of State of New Hampshire have any idea that a key executive in the private firm that programs and “counts” 80% of the state’s ballots on hackable, error-prone Diebold voting machines is a convicted narcotics trafficker?
In 1990, Ken Hajjar, the Director of Sales and Marketing for LHS Associates, and childhood friend of company owner John Silvestro, was arrested and pled guilty to charges of “Sale/CND” (Sale of Controlled Narcotics/Drugs) which earned him a 12 month sentence, according to documents received via a public records request and posted this evening at BlackBoxVoting.org.
LHS Associates, as BBV’s Bev Harris points out, programs “every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine.”
Hajjar himself is also the the guy who showed up in BRAD BLOG comments, at one point last summer, to let us know we are “totally full of shit” and “deluded…paranoid…looney idealogues” to boot. Well, maybe. But at least we don’t have a secret felony conviction, even while owning almost complete control over every vote cast and “counted” in New England.
The newly-revealed felon’s impolitic rant here earned him the boot from the Secretary of State of Connecticut, where he is now barred from working, as guest blogger Dori Smith pointed out in another BRAD BLOG story last November, detailing the horrors that are LHS Associates, Silvestro and Hajjar.
When Smith asked Hajjar about his admission that he and his company regularly replace voting machine memory cards (the keys to the kingdom!) at will, in the middle of elections, he told her, “I mean, I don’t pay attention to every little law.”
We’ll say!
Go check out Harris’ new article tonight, which includes more details and the arrest record — along with the note that “until recently, LHS employees were listed on the company Web site. Now the pages identifying who programs New England voting machines have been taken down.”
Now ya know why.
Even if you still don’t know who actually won the New Hampshire Primary.
(What say we actually count the ballots and put the questions to rest? Just sayin’…)
For good measure, we’ll also post again below the rare video footage of Silvestro, along with the first-hand BBV footage of the infamous and stunning Leon County, FL hack of a Diebold optical-scan machine — the very same ones used across NH on Tuesday — and the one originally seen in HBO’s Emmy-nominated Hacking Democracy…
A convicted drug dealer is counting the New Hamshire vote in secrecy on electronic computer voting machines that should have been abolished last year. Personally i don’t care what this person did prior to counting the U.S. vote. People who commit drug offenses have a right to rehabilition and a new life to become a productive citizen.
The point still remains that
1. diebold electronic voting machines were proven to be hackable and like all other e computer voting machines SHOULD BE RETURNED FOR REFUND.
2. Diebold electronic machines should not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be counting the U.S. vote. Diebold had ties to the people who stole the 2004 election. i believe the 2006 vote was different than the exit polls and raw data however never questioned.
3. The issue of ANY COMPANY being allowed to CONTINUE to count the U.S. vote in secrecy after it was clearly documented how 2004 was clearly stolen is the apidomy of how effective the U.S. mass media propaganda machine and the corporate 1%er takeover and of America is a complete success. The bush/cheney administration/ole skull and bones PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICA plan has come to complete frutation.
On the topic of the New Hampshire primary, it should be the interest of all Americans to verify the actual winner of the election with a manual recount. Remembering the bogus faux recount of Ohio in 2004 that was rigged 20 different way, i really invest much hope for any state recounts.
New Hampshire is a smaller state and it might be easier to hold a recount with a more legitimate outcome.
Eventually some people were convicted with small sentences for their part in fixing the Ohio recount unfortunately that didn’t include former secretary of state kenneth blackwell who should be locked up in a cage for all his efforts.
Even this is unsettled and upsetting. People were involved with throwing the electoral vote that gave bush/cheney the 2004 presidency to continue their reign of terror were given basically a slap on the wrist. The main person involved never served a day.
Welcome to voting in corporate Amerika. AND if you don’t like it you can move to country were forcing this form of democracy to real soon.
Don’t fall for how Dennis Kusinich could never be President because the corporate mass media says so. Vote for the real man of the people who supports peace and you can check out his stance against candidate on his website.
It is ironic that an ex-felon is contracted to count the vote of millions of people (with insufficient oversight I might add), while in many states ex-felons are not even allowed to cast their own vote.
someone at daily kos says that no electronic[diebold] machines are/were used in nh.
i saw no contradictions to this assertion.
in fact, this dkos poster called you all grotesque prevaricators.
who gets it accurately? the dkos poster or bradblog?
I just read on the kos website that kos and his staff are going to begin a purge of anyone who dares to bring up this topic- it is no longer even debatable. But that is the sort of open mindedness one can expect on Daily Kos. There is a small group of Democratic fascists over there who use name calling and troll ratings to try and silence dissent and further Group Think. kos’ desperate need to appear respectable to his tv pals like Russert is just sad. It’s obvious the popularity of his website has gone to his head. But I’ll still post over there, since there are still plenty of good, open minded folks there- though kos and his followers are not those people.
Anyway, this is what I think COULD HAVE happened in New Hampshire. A couple days before the election I read a article about how the Republican leadership was in a panic because it looked like Hillary was going to lose New Hampshire and then lose it all. Momentum was definitely on the side of Obama. Hillary is their dream opponent and the one they want to face in the general- her negatives and divisiveness are just way too high and they are confident she will be easy to defeat in the general election. I don’t think Hillary stole the election, but I think there is a chance it was given to her- and she doesn’t even realize it, though she might very well suspect it. Now the media narrative is all about how Hillary, the ordained candidate, has got her mojo back.
RE: #3, albertchampion.
The dkos diarist is misleading. Ballots were “counted” on Diebold scanners, even if no (or few) Diebold touch screen DREs were used. These scanners are proven to be hackable.
As a long time dkos reader (ID about 30K) I’ve about had it when the founder calls some of his own diarists “a bunch of whiny fucks”
For all of us who are interested in a recount, there seems to be a real possibility of one. There were 42 candidates on the Dem + Rep ballots and any one of them can request a recount. It seems like Albert Howard, one of those 42, is inclined to do so. If we can contact him and offer to raise the money for recount, he will likely request an official recount. Our chance is now.
See below for the news story about him.
“It was back to reality for presidential candidate Albert Howard of Ann Arbor, back behind the wheel of his Checker cab waiting for passengers at Detroit Metro Airport.
The father of eight savored his 40 votes in the New Hampshire presidential GOP primary. Howard was among 42 also-rans who paid $1,000 to get on the New Hampshire ballot, and he was something of a celebrity, interviewed by Time magazine, the New York Times, Boston Globe and the nightly ABC News.
At one point, his vote total climbed to 178, then dropped. He is asking the New Hampshire Secretary of State for a recount. Howard said he was in awe that even 40 people picked him.”
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs....WS06/801100364
As a long time dkos reader (ID about 30K) I’ve about had it when the founder calls some of his own diarists “a bunch of whiny fucks”
RECOUNT
“40 and out
It was back to reality for presidential candidate Albert Howard of Ann Arbor, back behind the wheel of his Checker cab waiting for passengers at Detroit Metro Airport.
The father of eight savored his 40 votes in the New Hampshire presidential GOP primary. Howard was among 42 also-rans who paid $1,000 to get on the New Hampshire ballot, and he was something of a celebrity, interviewed by Time magazine, the New York Times, Boston Globe and the nightly ABC News.
At one point, his vote total climbed to 178, then dropped. He is asking the New Hampshire Secretary of State for a recount. Howard said he was in awe that even 40 people picked him.
“I have no sense of defeat,” he said. “Maybe I’ll run for governor.””
(the zapkitty watches as the orange banners of the 527th “Fighting Squegees” approach Bradblog HQ. It’s -interesting- to see the dkosian leaders attempting to direct the attack while simultaneously keeping their heads in the sand.)
Yep, Daily Kos’s upper management has apparently declared war on EI in general and Bradblog in particular… again.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2...2264/85/434176
They’ve also launched preemptive attacks against against Bev Harris and Black Box Voting.
It’s strange, though… judging by the lack of depth of knowledge of EI issues displayed in the arguments of the “Don’t Question NH or be banned!” clique they seem to be insisting on bringing squeegees to an artillery duel.
And please note that many dkosian responses in that thread are actually quite sensible… it’s just that such sensible responses are being ignored… at best…
But my preliminary skirmishes have indicated that this regime is indeed a breeding ground of Holt holdouts… folks who are unaware of the severe problems associated with Holt’s bill and related legislation and apparently are hanging on to that concept of EI because it’s the only one endorsed by kos.
And some good news: sleep apnea has been double-teaming with my heart failure to produce “zombie kitty” effects seen in recent months.. These symptoms are treatable.
Personally I avoid KOS like the plague, it has too many users like DU did. And I got kicked out of DU really quick for standing up to the crap about “electronic vote tabulation devices” (I probably called it something different back then.)
What I see is that there are a bunch of people out there that are attacking our point of view. They don’t want the truth. They want their perceived truth to propagate like a virus.
ZapKitty,
The blackboxvoting.org website has been under attack from the early days it first came out. I remember some specifics, like the server being DDoS’d. This is a cyber-warfare game that is nasty to the bone, the rotten people are always using electronic technology in abusive ways, they exploit it no matter what it is.
This is a war.
A war for National Security and our Constitution itself.
Hey Zap, hope you feel better soon, 5 years later I just found out I have something called Transverse Myelitis…maybe my “quack” can figure something out now
Picky Picky Picky
To generate a gooder reality an electronic voting machine honcho at Liars and Heavy Shit snorts a little idea powder so as to help Amurkan elekshuns and you guys don’t get it?
Wow what is Amurka coming to these daze?
Thanks for the pointer to over there, Zap.
Wow. Talk about lunatics. Those guys are just nuts. That front pager, DHinMI and tons of other folks just seem willing to make up “facts” out of whole cloth (I love the guy who claimed he was part of a congressional study on voting, and a few comments later instructed everyone that every state has routine audits of paper ballots, of 3 to 5%)
I think it was DHinMI who said there is no incentive to steal an election, because they would get caught due to the paper ballots 🙂
Them folks is clueless. Which would be amusing, but for they seem to have no idea how they are screwing themselves with their insistence that transparency is not necessary, counting ballots is not necessary, etc.
I guess you’ve got to offer tons and tons of inaccurate information to become as popular as dKos, or something.
I’ll try to do better. This accurate, fact based, independently verifiable stuff is killing us over here at BRAD BLOG!
Vote fraud has already been proved in NH regarding Ron Paul and Sutton County, NH. Sutton County recorded 0 votes for Ron Paul. However, NH Meet-up groups from Sutton County stated that they voted for RP there. All of the sudden, 31 votes for RP showed up. This is clear evidence of vote fraud occurring right now. Vote rigging seems to be tolerated by both parties much like the War in Iraq, suspension of Habeas Corpus, detaining protesters, banning books like America Deceived (book) from Amazon, stealing private lands (Kelo decision), warrant-less wiretapping and refusing to investigate 9/11 properly. They are both guilty of treason.
Support Dr. Ron Paul, recount NH and save this great nation.
Brad…Kos might have prblems with your honesty but I emailed Amy Goodman today asking her to have you on her show. Clive Thompson from Time magazine was on talking about election theft and stated(1)Scientists agree computers haven’t been hacked in elections(2) Hanging chads were a problem in Fla. because voters couldn’t punch through thr ballots. I thought she did better than that.Saw an interview with Amy and Brian Lamb…she and Tim Russert are the most watched news shows. Anyway….We need you on Democracy Now.A lot of us know that you are a courageous patriot.
Posting this on all applicable threads to ensure the message gets through…
PLEASE NOTE:
This is not about Candidate A winning or Candidate B losing. This is solely about the hackable, unsecure voting machines (optical scan in NH) that have been investigated and proven to be crap and yet are still deployed to count the majority of elections in this country.
Whenever and wherever there is a discrepancy with electronic voting machines involved — no matter how big or small the race, no matter if it’s Repub or Dem — Voting Integrity advocates look into it. It’s what they do.
Please do not assume or assign motives, intentions or conclusions to anyone here that are not EXPLICITLY stated. Brad makes crystal clear that he doesn’t care who won or lost, just that the results are ACCURATE. Period.
The site owner is not responsible for the opinions of commenters in this open forum. No endorsement of commenters’ opinions is either intended or implied.
In addition, please note that The Brad Blog does not allege that fraud (or “rigging”) has actually occurred — only that the results of any contest that incorporates electronic voting systems should be subject to exacting scrutiny and independent verification prior to certification.
Thank you.
As a yellow dog Democratic supporter of Dr. Paul, I feel it is necessary to remind Republican and Independent voters what we Democratic voters have learned (the hard way) – expect vote fraud where vote totals are unauditable. Would you deposit money in your bank without a receipt? Your vote is far more precious than your bank account.
Dr. Paul’s message, first and foremost, is integrity. There will be voices who suggest that evidence of vote fraud should be ignored (again) as a “sufferable evil, “ rather than demanding a recount. Democratic voters, whose votes have not been counted in the past, have learned that “not rocking the boat” only results in more uncounted votes in election after election. Integrity demands taking a stand to count every vote. In America, every vote counts.
That an Exec at NH’s Diebold Vote Counting Firm Convicted of Narcotics Trafficking shows how far this nation has fallen. We can’t even trust our Illustrious Leaders or pillars of our communities anymore. It’s as though there’s so much corruption everywhere, from the top down. I remember when I was a teen reading accounts of all the hoodlums running .governments in other parts of the world, demonstrators being whisked away to be “disappeared” in the dark of night, as well as assassinations that were commonplace. Now I think how much our nation resembles all the rogue nations I used to read about in disgust back in the 60’s and on up to the present day. Sometimes I get so disgusted I want to off myself, but then I remember the hope I have in people like you, Brad, who speak truth to power and give your loyal readers a voice of strength to carry back to their own camps. My hat’s off to you, kudos, and a cartwheel.
I looked on the Black Box website and they are unclear what “Sale / CND” is. One individual speculated that “CND” might mean “controlled narcotic drugs.” A one year suspended sentence to a county facility, however, suggests that the charge could be a misdemeanor, not a felony — like selling marijuana? Hasn’t anyone looked at the actual court file yet?
checked it out — guy is apparently convicted of a “Class A Misdemeanor”
Congratulations to BradBlog for reporting on the unusual aspects of Diebold voting machines and the New Hampshire Dem primary.
Food for thought in the article …
New Hampshire primary results questioned: Electronic voting machines threaten U.S. democracy? (AmericanChronicle.com, January 11, 2008)
http://www.google.com/search?q=...e-person-would
Premeditated?
http://www.google.com/search?q=...a-hacker-would