Crash!

On Election Night, the State Board of Elections website is down.

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Maryland’s Administrator for Life, Part Three

State Board of Elections (SBE) Administrator Linda Lamone has earned a legion of enemies in her 12-year tenure at the agency. But she has one very powerful friend: Senate President Mike “Big Daddy” Miller. And he was there to help in her hour of need in the spring of 2005.

Dissatisfied with having a Democrat as the SBE Administrator, Governor Robert Ehrlich plotted to get rid of her. State law at that time required four of five votes from the Board for an ouster. Ehrlich had three Republicans and a sympathetic Democrat who suspended Lamone but the matter went to court. Lamone’s fate degenerated into a partisan fight between Ehrlich and the Democratic General Assembly leadership. The Democrats ultimately won by passing the “Linda Lamone for Life” bill over Ehrlich’s veto, which ensured that Lamone would remain in office even if voted out by the Board until the Senate confirmed a successor. The Gazette wrote this about the bill:

The bill is so restrictive that the elections administrator could not be removed from office even if all five members of the State Board of Elections vote to fire her, even if she were convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to death row and stripped of her voting rights. Only when the state Senate approves a replacement could she be removed. Now that’s job security.

Who determines when - or if - a replacement could ever be considered by the Senate? Mike Miller, of course. The Gazette presented this theory explaining Lamone’s alliance with Big Daddy:

Lamone serves on the Attorney Grievance Commission, which heard a complaint from then GOP Chairman Michael S. Steele into Miller's contacts with members of the Maryland Court of Appeals over the 2002 redistricting map. Miller, who could have faced disbarment, emerged unscathed.

After the charges against him were made public, Miller told reporters that he did not even know that Lamone was on the commission.

Lamone calls the idea that she protected Miller “preposterous and insulting.” She was appointed to the commission by the chief judge of the Court of Appeals.

Chief Judge Robert M. Bell “obviously thinks enough of me that he's reappointed me several times,” she said.

Regardless of Big Daddy’s relationship with Lamone, the two have overlapping interests. Miller is fairly satisfied with today’s campaign finance system because it has performed well in keeping his Democratic majority solid. Lamone seeks to block any reforms that challenge her power or create more work for her agency. The two agree on one thing: change should be regarded with suspicion. That explains Lamone’s testimony against the Montgomery County Delegation’s local bill allowing more disclosure in their jurisdiction. Her rationale for opposing the bill, which is that “the public’s access to campaign finance reports would be fragmented and more challenging,” has no basis in reality.


Annapolis custom holds that local bills (those that apply only to one county) often pass the full General Assembly if they are supported by their delegations. But Senator Joan Carter Conway (D-43), Chair of the Senate’s Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, bottled up this bill. That is how Linda Lamone was able to block a reform supported by the entire Montgomery County government as well as numerous progressive groups.

One Lamone watcher describes her performance this way:

The State Board of Elections does an impressive amount of work. Lamone or her assistants show up at every relevant hearing, submit detailed testimony, and apparently devote many hours influencing legislation through backchannels and private conversations. The only work they seem unwilling to handle is the work of actually running an election.

Rather than provide real impartial guidance to make Maryland's elections work better, Lamone is far more concerned with reducing her own responsibilities and deflecting any change the SBE would have to accommodate or adapt to.

Imagine the state police spending more than half their time defeating proposals that would require them to learn new technology, or receive training that would improve their effectiveness. Imagine the department of the environment spending taxpayer resources every year on lobbying campaigns to resist improvements to protect the Bay. This is pretty much what the SBE does in placing turf and self-preservation over the public good.

Despite all of this, Maryland’s Administrator for Life enjoys enormous job security that depends on one man: Mike Miller. That makes Big Daddy Lamone’s true boss.

There is one silver lining. Maryland does not have a “Senate President for Life” law – yet.

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Maryland’s Administrator for Life, Part Two

Perhaps the one thing for which Maryland State Board of Elections (SBE) Administrator Linda Lamone will always be remembered is her stauch support of Diebold voting machines, which the state began using in 2001. By 2004, voters had filed a lawsuit asking to vote by paper because of research showing flaws in the machines. According to the Gazette, Lamone pushed back against expert witnesses who said the machines were vulnerable to hacking.

Lamone said she gave no credibility to a report last year by Johns Hopkins University professor Aviel D. Rubin, which described the machines’ source code as riddled with security flaws and sloppy programming. Lamone also said she never considered decertifying the machines, despite subsequent reports by SAIC Corp. and RABA Technologies that found the system to be highly vulnerable.

Rubin told the court that a voter-verified paper trail should be added to the machines because there is no other way to independently audit the machines and have a meaningful recount.

Lamone criticized Rubin's “so-called research,” saying that it annoyed her in part because it interrupted an expensive pre-paid vacation she had planned and was submitted to The New York Times before it was published in an academic journal.

Lamone had known since at least September 2003 that the machines had serious problems. SBE had redacted a publicly-released report about them at the time; the unredacted version detailing “extraordinary security vulnerabilities” appears here. But Lamone still told a Virginia legislative committee in 2006 that she would allow paper verification only “over my dead body.” Here is the infamous video.



Ironically, even employees of Diebold despised Lamone. The Gazette described an email about Lamone sent inside the company:

An internal Diebold e-mail dated Dec. 18, 2002, said to be from Sue Page, one of Diebold's Maryland project managers, described Lamone as being “about power and control.”

“She feels powerful when she makes negative comments. What she misses is that her negative comments reflect negatively on her,” the e-mail says. “She should be proud of and support her initiative of a state wide voting change, rather than casting doubt on her own decision.”

The e-mail continues saying that the State Board of Elections has a negative approach, mandating to county election directors instead of working with them, and threatening researchers rather than building a positive relationship.

Advice on how to deal with the media fell on deaf ears, the e-mail says. “There’s not much that we can do, other than hope that a new Republican Governor will effect change.”

Lamone is legendary for giving no quarter to critics. Here she is, blasting her opponents as living in “fantasy land” and walking out on an interview.



Diebold’s problems began to multiply soon after Maryland began using their machines. In December 2003, the Associated Press reported that Diebold employed at least five felons in management roles, including “a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.” In September 2004, the State of California sued Diebold for fraud. In the 2004 general election, four percent of the Diebold machines in Montgomery County experienced “screen-freezes” and the company had to repair 4,700 machines in four counties a year later. Lamone did not tell her own board about the issue and it was not reported publicly until the Post broke the story in October 2006.

But wait - there is more! In December 2005, Diebold’s CEO, who once promised he would “deliver” Ohio for George W. Bush, resigned. At about the same time, a shareholder class action lawsuit was filed against the company alleging that it “failed to keep control over the quality of its voting machines.” (That suit and four others were dismissed last year.) In 2006, the House of Delegates voted 137-0 for balloting with a paper trail, but the Senate blocked the move. None of this stopped Lamone from praising Diebold’s products in its advertising brochures in 2007.

After many problems in Montgomery County’s 2006 election, the state decided to scrap the machines and file suit against Diebold to recover the costs incurred in fixing them. Diebold was finally forced to admit in a March 2009 California state hearing that its machines could lose votes without any evidence of deletion.

Diebold’s voting machines may be headed out of the Free State, but Linda Lamone still survives. How can that be? We’ll find out in Part Three.

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Maryland’s Administrator for Life, Part One

Suppose a local bill (a bill affecting only one county) gets the unanimous support of its local government, the unanimous support of its county delegation in Annapolis and is passed by the House of Delegates by 135-0. You would think it would be headed for the Governor’s desk, right?

Not if it’s a campaign finance reform bill and Linda Lamone get winds of it.

HB 825, a Montgomery Delegation bill originally sponsored by Delegate Susan Lee (D-16) last spring, would have allowed the Montgomery County Council to pass additional disclosure requirements for contributors to County Executive and County Council races. One such additional requirement could be disclosure of an individual contributor’s employer, as is currently required at the federal level, or of a business contributor’s parent company. This could help unlock use of the LLC loophole, which is frequently used by contributors (often developers) to avoid the state’s contribution limits. Because Montgomery County is a jurisdiction in which at-large County Council races now cost $300,000 or more and County Executive races go into the million-dollar territory, scrutiny of campaign finance is becoming more critical. Recognizing that, the County Executive, the County Council, Common Cause of Maryland, the League of Women Voters, Progressive Maryland and the Montgomery County Civic Federation all lined up behind Lee’s bill.

The only entity to oppose the bill was the State Board of Elections (SBE), represented by Administrator Linda Lamone. If Comptroller Peter Franchot is the most hated man in Annapolis, Lamone may very well be the most hated woman. Originally appointed by Governor Parris Glendening in 1997, Lamone had worked as a lobbyist in the Schaefer administration but had never headed up a local Board of Elections.

Shortly after her appointment, complaints cropped up about a flawed uniform computer system for counties and vanishing registration records. But nothing provoked more ire than SBE’s horrendous ELECTrack campaign finance reporting system. A 2001 Gazette article chronicled a litany of protests:

“I’m from the ghetto in East Baltimore,” said Del. Clarence Davis (D-Dist. 45) of Baltimore. “People don't have computers. ... My treasurer's got a computer at work, but he can't use it [to file the campaign finance report].”

Other complaints are more complex. Some treasurers simply couldn't get the software to work properly. Others found to their dismay that the new system was not compatible to the computer databases they had been using for years, making the transfer of information impossible. Others found that the software limited their ability to list or organize information they way they wanted to, whether it was by ZIP code, donation size, union affiliation or something else.

“My treasurer is a very sophisticated mathematician,” said Del. Martha S. Klima (R-Dist. 9) of Lutherville. “He's a CPA. He's been cursing the system.”

Joe Shannon, campaign treasurer to Sen. Thomas M. Middleton (D-Dist. 28) of Waldorf, said the system burdens candidates and treasurers who are trying to meet deadlines and don't want to be embarrassed by late fees and other potential penalties.

“People who are really trying to be compliant are a bit terrorized,” he said.

Shannon said board staffers have tried to be helpful but erred by not bringing in a group of treasurers to test the software.

“You hate to say it, but it almost to some degree may prevent people from considering public service,” he said of the electronic filing requirements.

When the House of Delegates tried to require SBE to provide regular reports about new voting machines and improving campaign finance software, Lamone replied, “I don't think that the language is needed at all.” “That’s how she operates,” one of our informants told us. “Her first response is that a problem is not a problem. Her second response is that it’s somebody else’s fault.”

We’ll learn more about Lamone’s career in Part Two.

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State Board of Elections Watch

The District 4 candidates were required to file their second pre-primary campaign finance reports last Friday (April 10). As of this writing, the State Board of Elections (SBE) has posted the reports for just four candidates: Cary Lamari, Thomas Hardman, Andrew Padula and George Gluck. SBE's foot-dragging in posting the first filings (including an eleven-day delay for Nancy Navarro's report) prompted four candidates to write a joint letter urging speedy release. Will SBE post the candidates' second filings prior to the District 4 primary on April 21? We will be watching.

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Are Preprinted Absentee Ballot Applications Legal?

The campaigns of both Ben Kramer and Nancy Navarro have been mailing out prefilled absentee ballot applications to District 4 voters. Each application already contains the name, address, date of birth, phone number and party registration of each voter, all of which are public records available from the Montgomery County Board of Elections. The voter need only sign it and mail it in to the Board of Elections. But language on the application itself as well as the state’s regulations call into question whether this tactic is legal.

We hear that Kramer’s prefilled applications have been sent to voters over the age of 65 in the district. Each application comes with a letter from the campaign urging the voter to fill it out:


Below is an example of an actual prefilled application sent by Kramer with the identifying information redacted:


The Navarro campaign also admits to sending out prefilled applications, although they say they are sending them to supporters. Kramer’s mailings seem to be more widespread.

So what’s the problem? The Montgomery County Board of Elections posts their absentee ballot application on their website. We reproduce the backside below.


The application says:

1. If you need assistance to complete this application because of a disability or inability to read or write:
(a) You may receive assistance from any person other than a candidate on your ballot, your employer or an agent of your employer, or an officer or agent of your union.
(b) The person assisting you to fill in this application must complete the Certification of Assistance portion of the application. If you are unable to sign this application, the assistant should print your name, followed by his or her initials.

Furthermore, Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR) 33.11.02.02 states:

A. In General. A formal application for an absentee ballot may be made to a local board only:

(1) On a form prescribed by the State Board;

(2) On a form provided under federal law; or

(3) Until January 1, 2006, on a form prescribed by a local board and approved by the State Administrator.

B. Dissemination of Forms.

(1) Local boards and others may reproduce and distribute the form prescribed by the State Board, but only if they do so without altering that form.

(2) The State Board or a local board may post the Board-prescribed form on the Internet, as long as the form is posted in a way that precludes altering its language.

So both the application itself and the state’s regulations seem to prohibit most prefilled or altered absentee ballot applications. But we hear that the State Board of Elections, Maryland’s sorriest agency, permits the practice anyway. Our sources tell us that both the Democratic and Republican Parties distributed prefilled applications in 2006. And the Navarro campaign says it has a letter from the Montgomery County Board of Elections approving its mailings. That is a far cry from 2002, when former Attorney General Joe Curran cracked down on prefilled applications.

We also hear that seniors in particular are reacting negatively to the applications. Many do not like to see their personal information used in this way, even if it is publicly available. Kramer’s use of the tactic is particularly ironic given his lead sponsorship of bills penalizing identity fraud against the elderly and financial exploitation of the elderly.

If the state and/or county Boards of Elections approved the use of prefilled absentee ballot applications by the Kramer and Navarro campaigns, then the campaigns cannot be blamed for obeying the law as they understood it. But both boards must still enforce their own rules. If they do not, then this will go down as another mortifying episode in Maryland’s increasingly voluminous history of electoral blunders.

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The Sorriest Agency in Maryland

The Gazette reported last week that state prosecutors had filed charges against officers of 40 campaign committees for filing reports late. The prosecutors should instead be going after the State Board of Elections (SBE), one of Maryland’s most incompetent agencies.

As a civic activist, I’ve had to deal with a lot of state and local bureaucracies, including WMATA, Park and Planning, the Montgomery County Revenue Authority, the Department of Permitting Services, DPWT, the State Highway Administration, the police and more. None of them compares to SBE. I was first exposed to SBE’s ways after I was appointed Treasurer of the District 18 Democratic Team last summer. After we sent in the signed paperwork reporting my appointment, SBE never acknowledged it. In November, SBE sent a notice to our Chair and the former Treasurer pointing out mathematical errors in the reports filed by my predecessor. They gave me one month to fix them or be fined.

And so began my excruciating encounter with ELECTrack, SBE’s archaic reporting software. Correcting an old mistake is not a simple matter of changing an entry on a spreadsheet; each of the old reports had to be scrubbed and reset. I called SBE FIVE TIMES asking for help and electronic copies of our old records. Of course, I received no aid. I eventually had to reconstruct the entire history of our fund line-by-line and re-submit all of our reports with amendments to account for just one mathematical mistake.

Sensing trouble from the unresponsive bureaucracy, I hand-delivered the reports to SBE’s office in Annapolis so that I could get a stamped receipt. When I asked the clerk why our notices still went to the former Treasurer, she pointed to a stack of papers on her desk and said they had not entered them yet. So five months after my appointment, our paperwork sat gathering dust. I still do not receive any correspondence from SBE to this day. So when former Attorney General candidate Scott Rolle, one of the prosecutors’ targets, says that he filed his reports but there was a “computer glitch,” I am inclined to believe him.

Those “computer glitches” continue to hamper SBE. Despite a letter from four District 4 candidates calling for release of the special election campaign finance reports, unspecified “problems” have prevented SBE from posting reports due on March 24 for Rob Goldman, Robin Ficker, Chris Paladino and Lou August. (They posted Nancy Navarro’s report on Saturday – eleven days late.) So what was SBE doing while I was asking them to do their job? Their administrator, Linda Lamone, was testifying against campaign disclosure reform.

That’s right, SBE has targeted a local bill sponsored by Delegate Susan Lee (D-16) that would allow Montgomery County to require additional disclosure by campaign contributors above and beyond state law. The intent of the bill is to allow the county to identify “bundled” or related contributions, such as multiple checks from officers or employees of the same company, or firms that are related to each other. That’s a common tactic in Montgomery County, especially among developers, and we cited one example of it in our case study of race track owner William Rickman. Amazingly, SBE administrator Lamone told the Senate’s Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee last week that under the bill, “the public’s access to campaign finance reports would be fragmented and more challenging.” We reproduce Lamone’s testimony below.


The real reason SBE opposes Lee’s bill – which passed the House unanimously – is that they do not want to perform any more work. That’s typical of bureaucracies all over the world. But how credible are SBE’s claims when they are incapable of processing campaign finance reports from one special election which has just ten candidates? Who is holding this agency accountable for its performance?

And how badly will they perform on timely report access during the state and county elections next year?

Disclosure: Delegate Jeff Waldstreicher (D-18), one of the members of the District 18 Democratic Team, was named in the state prosecutors’ statement. I have not discussed his case with him and have no knowledge of its specifics.

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D4 Candidates Call on SBE to Release Campaign Finance Reports

As we have previously noted, the State Board of Elections (SBE) has collected but not yet released all the District 4 campaign finance reports due on March 24. Your author called them to urge public release and was blown off. Last night, District 4 candidates Ben Kramer, Cary Lamari, Nancy Navarro and Rob Goldman signed a joint letter calling for the release of all reports that we reprint below. This blog intends to analyze the contents of the reports for each candidate, both for the March 24 filings and the April 10 filings (which are the last ones due before the April 21 primary).

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State Board of Elections Reports "Problems" with D4 Finance Reports

It has now been a week since the first wave of campaign finance reports was due in the District 4 special election. So far, the reports for Nancy Navarro, Chris Paladino, Robin Ficker, Rob Goldman and Lou August are not available on the State Board of Elections (SBE) website. We called SBE and were told that they had the reports but were facing "problems" posting them on the Internet. This is not the fault of the candidates and is an administrative issue at SBE. We urged SBE to get the reports online "ASAP" because of the short timeline of the election. Once they are all up, we will investigate the finance reports for each candidate.

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