But Maryland's elections administrator and champion survivor says she is not going anywhere.

Never mind the multi-pronged effort by the Ehrlich administration to replace her. Or the calls for her resignation from critics of the paperless Diebold voting machines she has embraced. Never mind the poisonous atmosphere at meetings of the State Board of Elections, whose members suspended her last month, only to have their action overturned by a judge.

"I'm going to win because I'm right," Lamone said with a steely smile this week, adding that she plans to stick around "for several more years, at least."

Lamone said she has a mission to modernize the state's election system.

"I've dedicated the last seven years of my life to getting this done. And at times it's been extremely difficult, but I want to see it through," she said, adding that she also feels loyalty to her staff. Lamone controls hiring and firing at the 42-employee agency and holds tremendous power over the state's election apparatus.

Lamone, a Democrat, said she does not know why the Ehrlich administration has plotted her removal.

"I'm mystified," she said, denying that she has made decisions based on politics. "When the governor came in to file for office [in 2002], he wanted assurances that it wouldn't be like '94. I assured him that it would be a fair election, and it was."

Lamone said she has generally been too busy to get angry or obsess over the criticism she has received, or the nearly nonexistent relationship she has with the State Board of Elections.

She testified in court that her relationship with the state board was fine until board Chairman Gilles W. Burger (R) met with members of the governor's staff, who were not happy with her. About a year ago, the board asked her to resign and she refused. Since then, Lamone and the board have not been on speaking terms.

In the meantime, she has survived three reports by outside computer experts ripping the state's $75 million Diebold computer system as highly vulnerable to hacking. She has survived criticism from local election directors and boards who have chafed at her management style.

Finally, the state board sought to suspend her two months before the Nov. 2 election, but Lamone won a preliminary victory in court. She still faces an administrative hearing in two weeks on charges brought by the board, even as she and her staff are finalizing preparations for the election. She is also in the midst of a massive project to buy a new multimillion-dollar electronic voter registration system.

Creature of Annapolis

Lamone, 62, grew up on a farm in Howard County, the daughter of a coffee executive, but spent much of her time in Annapolis. Her uncle was the sailing master at the Naval Academy, and her mother served as a clerk at the State House.

During legislative sessions, Lamone would help her mother. "I got to know a lot of people and just fell in love with the process," she said.

Lamone learned her toughness from her father.

"He felt strongly about women's rights and taught me to stand up for myself and against injustices," she said.

Playing high schools sports, including volleyball, field hockey, basketball and softball, also helped give her a competitive edge, she said.

She married in 1970, went to the University of Maryland law school and joined the Attorney General's Office as the liaison to the Board of Elections in 1981. She later became counsel to Lt. Gov. Melvin A. "Mickey" Steinberg (D) and lobbied the legislature for Gov. William Donald Schaefer's administration along with Alan Rifkin, who ran Schaefer's legislative shop. Rifkin and Lamone teamed up briefly to form the lobbying practice of Rifkin, Evans, Silver and Lamone before Lamone struck out on her own.

After a stint at the Maryland Higher Education Commission, Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) tapped Lamone as elections administrator in 1997, replacing Gene Raynor, a longtime Schaefer ally who now has a central role in the various attempts to fire her.

Raynor vs. Lamone

Raynor (D) said he and Lamone used to be close, saying that an ink drawing, a gift from him, is displayed in Lamone's office. He said he hired Lamone's sister at her request.

But the falling-out has been extreme.

At Tuesday's board meeting, Raynor repeatedly attacked Lamone. He charged that the State Board of Elections had told officials in Baltimore and a Hispanic group in June that it would take six to eight weeks to get registration forms.

"If I had done that, I would have been fired," he said. "That to me is outrageous."

Lamone denied Raynor's accusation.

Raynor also said Lamone had never trained election judges or conducted an election at the local level, saying she is the wrong person for the job.

He questioned her hiring practices. "How many blacks have you hired?" he asked.

He said he asked for copies of Lamone's expense accounts and resumes of people who had applied for jobs two months ago, but had not received a response.

"I would think that board members are entitled to those," Raynor said.

"I'm not going to discuss these matters with you all," she said quietly.

Then Raynor attacked Lamone personally, contending that when he came to the board offices as a member of Ehrlich's transition team last year, she had praised him and his leadership, saying that she followed in his footsteps.

"Then last week in court you said you found the office was a shambles. I'd like to know which time you were telling the truth. When were you telling the truth?" he asked.

Lamone remained silent.

After the meeting, Raynor complained about the installation of a wood floor in Lamone's office, showing a slip saying it cost $10,000.

Raynor also said Lamone and her staff will not tell him what they are spending money on, or anything else.

"The press lets her get away with it," he said.

Last year, Raynor was quoted in The (Baltimore) Sun saying that Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. should toss Lamone out on her ear.

Ironically, Raynor was in charge in 1994 when the Republican Party and Ellen R. Sauerbrey charged Democrats with massive voter fraud.

Raynor said Thursday that Lamone is extremely political, a hand-picked ally of Glendening and former Secretary of State John Willis, who ran for comptroller in 2002 against Schaefer, who has famously hated Glendening and Co.

"She is more interested in Lamone first, and it looks like Willis and Glendening second," he said.

Lamone said she has stayed out of politics entirely since 1997.

Paper ballot controversy

Lamone keeps a roll of paper in her desk and one in her purse to demonstrate what she considers to be the fallacy of paper receipts. She unfurls the roll, several feet long, across the floor to show what she considers to be paper receipts' cumbersome and problematic nature.

Paper can and has been manipulated in election after election, Lamone said. An elections expert testifying on the state's behalf noted that The New York Times has written 4,744 articles on paper ballot fraud since 1850, an average of one article every 12 days, she pointed out.

"I don't think they understand what we do in Maryland to protect the voting system," she said of the Diebold system's critics. "Second, they don't understand the practical implications of what they want."

The critics are actually doing a "disservice to the people of the United States" by casting doubt on the election system and the credibility of elections, Lamone said.

But opponents of the Diebold voting system, led by Green Party member Linda Schade, have criticized Lamone for continuing to back the system in the face of three studies by computer experts showing that it is vulnerable to hackers. Schade, along with a group of prominent Democrats and Republicans, is suing Lamone over the machines and has debated her nationally.

Lamone's name has a prominent place in the blogosphere of paper ballot advocates.

"I just love being a celebrity," she said wryly, reflecting on a recent one-on-one appearance with Schade on CNN.

Ironically, Lamone has had enemies at Diebold, who have privately ripped her public relations and management skills.

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."

Diebold is now seeking to bill the state for nearly $1 million in interest on payments it contends Lamone delayed in making; Lamone contends that Diebold is not entitled to the interest and that the company was paid when it fulfilled the terms of the contract.

Lamone acknowledges that her decisions have annoyed both parties at different points, pointing to a tiff with the Republican Party over absentee ballot applications it mailed a few years ago. Lamone said the applications were not proper, and forced elections workers to try to contact the voters before sending out ballots.

"If I was a rabid Democrat, I could have just let them go, and they could have been challenged later," she said. "That's why you need somebody sitting in this chair who is willing to take the heat and make the tough decisions regardless of party."

Lamone also has Democratic critics, including former delegate Cheryl C. Kagan.

Kagan said the Ehrlich administration has bungled the attempts to fire Lamone, with weak reasoning and worse timing when far better reasons are available.

"She has a long track record of incompetence, in particular with regard to technology," Kagan said.

She cited snafus with a voter registration system that Lamone sought to force on local boards, a system the state's larger counties said did not work well. At one point, the State Board of Elections computers and the Motor Vehicles Administration computers were not interfacing properly for voter registrations, causing foulups that resulted in some people being denied a vote.

And the campaign finance computer system initially was so bad that treasurers were resigning in protest and legislators were furious, Kagan said.

Each time, Lamone was unwilling to accept that there were any flaws, Kagan charged.

"She sticks her head in the ground and denies that there is a problem," Kagan said. "When you start thinking about electronic voting, and you have a state board that has a history of disastrous results whenever it touches technology, I was predicting this.

"She has failed, over and over. She has failed to run that agency the way it needs to be done."

Allies

Equally as impressive as her enemies list is her ability to find support among the powers that be.

The Democratic Party has leapt to her defense, with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., House Speaker Michael E. Busch, U.S. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer and state party Chairman Isiah Leggett all rallying to her defense. They have decried the plots to depose her as a Republican putsch aimed at controlling and tilting the state's election apparatus in the GOP's favor.

"I think Linda Lamone has been a model public servant," said Busch (D-Dist. 30) of Annapolis.

"She has taken on a very tough task, and she has been acknowledged by her peers through the country," he added, noting her status as president-elect of the National Association of State Election Directors.

"She has taken an agency that had been politicized for years and made it an independent agency and put it above the political fray and she should be commended for that," Busch said. "It's a credit to her that where other people would have folded her tent and gone home, she's willing to stand up for what she believes is right."

At one point, Ehrlich administration officials pointed to a link between Lamone and Miller (D-Dist. 27) of Chesapeake Beach.

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.

Lamone's most important ally at this point is the state law that makes it extremely hard to remove her.

Four of the five-member Election Board have to vote to fire her and must show good cause. Raynor's status as a board member has been challenged in court by Bobbie Mack, whom Raynor replaced. Mack, who has been attending board meetings and sitting in the audience, said she should remain on the board until and if Raynor is confirmed by the state Senate.

Mack said Lamone has had a hard job, given the tremendous change in election processes in the past several years.

"Whenever you have changes, you are going to make enemies," Mack said.