It is now the second largest company by share of the voting population served behind only ES&S. Dominion Voting Systems, which is at the center of several ongoing defamation lawsuits related to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, has jumped from serving 2.7 percent of registered voters 10 years ago to serving 26.3 percent of voters in 2022. This comes as the landscape of the voting tech industry continues to shift.ĮS&S continues to dominate the market, with 43.8 percent of registered voters living in a jurisdiction using its equipment - up from 37.2 percent in 2012, according to data from Verified Voting.īut new players continue to expand in the voting tech space. “One thing is certain: by the end of this process, Louisiana will have a voting system with a voter-verified paper record that can be used to audit election results and reassure voters that their votes are being accurately counted,” said Ardoin in a press release after the commission’s final meeting. That undertaking will take at least 18 to 24 months, according to John Tobler, a spokesperson for Ardoin’s office. Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin will now put together standards for new equipment and a request for proposals. They further recommended scanned tabulation and full compliance with federal and state voting guidelines. The commission ultimately recommended that the state either implement a system of hand-marked paper ballots printed on demand or the use of ballot marking devices. Representatives from industry giants ES&S and Dominion Voting Systems presented alongside smaller outfits such as Clear Ballot, Hart InterCivic, Smartmatic, KNOWiNK, VotingWorks, Democracy Live and Civix. Representatives from nine companies spoke to the commission after two days of providing tech demos of their various systems. Sharon Hewitt at a meeting of the commission on June 29. “The job of this commission is to talk about the characteristics and the features of different systems that we thought were attractive and appealing to us,” said Republican Louisiana state Sen. To identify its next move, the state convened a Voting System Commission made up of the state’s top election officials, lawmakers, representatives of local government representatives and other experts to study the issue. Several voting technology companies spent recent weeks trying to woo officials in Louisiana, which is the only state in the U.S. This was after Madison County received its grant, making it one of the final jurisdictions in the state to have that opportunity. Kentucky joined at least 11 other states in banning outside funding of election processes in March. Madison County funded the new equipment through a grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life through a program some critics have called “Zuck bucks” because of the Center’s funding from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Where he was previously spending about 40 cents per ballot, he now spends about 6 cents on each. “Your upfront costs are higher, but the ROI is short,” said Barger.īarger said the machines he purchased were more than $2,500 each, but that the machines cut costs for ballot printing. Madison County has used the machines in some capacity for several years but recently expanded their use. Kenny Barger, the county clerk in Madison County, Ky., oversaw the full rollout of Election Systems & Software (ES&S) ExpressVote machines, a ballot marking device, for the state’s May primaries. Other jurisdictions have begun adopting ballot marking devices (BMDs), which let voters cast their vote using a digital interface before printing their completed ballot on-demand. In addition to facilitating post-election audits, Bride believes the new system will help the county in other ways. Peoria now uses paper ballots and Hart InterCivic’s Verity Scan device, which has voters feed their ballot into a scanner. “That’s easier to do with a paper-based system.” “There is a push to audit more elections,” said Thomas Bride, executive director of the Peoria County Election Commission. In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine published a consensus report which recommended exclusively using paper ballots or electronic ballot marking devices because of the cybersecurity risks of recording votes directly into electronic memory. In systems with a VVPAT, voters will verify their votes on a printed paper ballot which is kept for election auditing. Cybersecurity experts and researchers have long pointed out that DREs can pose significant risks to election security, particularly those which don’t produce a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).
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