By Leyla Kokmen
Denver Post Business Writer

Nov. 14 - When the U.S. Postal Service announced last week it would begin a project to let people across the country choose which images will grace the stamps commemorating this century, the celebration carried all the way to Colorado Springs.

That's because LAN Design Inc., a tiny Colorado Springs software consulting firm, has been tapped to tabulate the votes, whether they're for a depiction of a Hula Hoop, a drive-in movie or some other chunk of Americana.

LDI is one of several companies that were awarded the $7.5 million contract from the postal service.

Starting in February, people can cast ballots choosing which subjects they'd like to see on stamps commemorating the second half of this century. Stamps for 1900 to 1949 have been selected by a committee; those from 1950-1999 will be selected through the voting process.

LDI president Steve Fisher said he expects to process data from up to 100,000 ballots a day for the next 18 months - 10 times more than the company's biggest project today.

For the 10-person company that designs custom software and database applications, the "Celebrate the Century" project is the biggest job of its 10-year life. In the past, LDI has created graphical database applications for such clients as General Motors and Mobil Oil, Fisher said.

And LDI has only two months to get the system up and running for testing in January.

But Fisher says he isn't worried about the scope of the project.

"It's not at all daunting," he said. The company has already designed the database and plans to begin coding the software Monday, he added.

The plan, Fisher said, is to create a system that can tabulate the votes without the programmers having to babysit it.

"The goal of this whole project is to run it pretty much hands off," he said. Each day the system will provide the postal service a record of the day's votes.

LDI was selected for the project by the market research firm The Gallup Organization, whose Lincoln, Neb., facility will be the site of the vote tabulation. There, Gallup will scan in 100,000 ballots a day, and LDI's software system will take the raw data, validate it, summarize it and total it.

Gallup has worked with LDI for several years, so the choice was easy.

"It was comforting to us that we know what kind of work they do when we get into big projects like this," said Mary Fuller, who will coordinate the project for Gallup. One of the projects LDI and Gallup have done together, in fact, was a business customer satisfaction survey for the postal service.

For the "Celebrate the Century" project, Fisher said, 65 million ballots will be printed, available in local post offices, some magazines and in participating schools. A Web site for the project is also being planned, where voting also will be possible.

He said he anticipates between 3.2 million and 4.9 million completed ballots - but because the postal service has never done a voting project of this magnitude before, officials don't know how many surveys they'll get back.

In each of five categories - lifestyle, people and events, sports, arts and entertainment, and science and technology - voters can select from several subjects, choosing the one they think best expresses the decade, said Don Smeraldi, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service.

For example, he said, when people vote on lifestyle for the 1950s, they can choose between subjects including American modern furniture, drive-in movies, Hula Hoops and 3-D movies.

The voting period for each decade will be a month, with the 1950s starting in February and the 1990s in April 1999. After the voting for each decade, the stamps will be designed and unveiled, with the 1990s stamps issued early in the year 2000.