Salt Lake County may have to come up with $10 million or more to keep elections running smoothly beyond 2015. Elections Director Scott Konopasek announced Tuesday that the county’s voting machines may need to be swapped by then,meaning that the county would have to come up with the cash for about 3,000 replacements. The projected…
The Omaha World-Herald Co. has sold its minority interest in Election Systems & Software Inc., an Omaha company that is the world’s largest election technology company, to McCarthy Group of Omaha and the election company’s management. Terms of the private sale were not disclosed. McCarthy Capital, a private equity investment company, already was a minority…
Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) and Scytl today announced a strategic alliance that will provide for BALLOTsafe, a fully integrated online ballot delivery and marking system that will afford military, overseas, absentee and disabled voters the opportunity to cast ballots in a timely, secure and reliable manner. By combining the market proven election leadership…
Westmoreland County Election Bureau officials are trying to avoid a repeat of the long lines of voters who waited to cast ballots in the last presidential election. So the county has purchased 21 additional touch-screen computer voting machines to ease the crush of voters in the largest precincts. “In the larger elections, such as a presidential…
A few days after New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran notified all 33 county clerks that their biennial voter purge would be canceled this year, Deputy Bernalillo County Clerk Robert Adams made a disturbing discovery — 44,601 county files stored on the state’s voter registration database had been accessed and altered. Accustomed to spending…
When Secretary of State Scott Gessler held his town hall in Saguache March 15, he told county residents that he had requested the distributor of the M650 voting machine to provide him with a report of Saguache election records. On March 28, Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) sent Gessler a copy of the M650’s Unity…
Sometimes, it seems that government has lost its capacity to run elections. Consider the double-edged sword of electronic voting machines: In some ways, new optical scan or touch-screen machines are more convenient. They certainly tabulate faster than former machines or humans counting paper ballots. They’re also expensive.
The Harrison County Commission has approved an eleventh-hour purchase of 80 new electronic voting machines. County Clerk Susan Thomas has been waiting patiently since the end of January for Commission to approve the purchase of new AutoMARK voting machines. Harrison County has been using the iVotronic machines for about five years. The state’s contract with…
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has certified the Unity 3.2.1.0 voting system by Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to the 2002 Voting System Standards. It is the fifth voting system to achieve federal certification under EAC’s Voting System Testing and Certification Program. The Unity 3.2.1.0 comprises two precinct-based optical scanners—the M100 and the DS200—and…
A Kanawha County commissioner is upset with the prospect of the state awarding a no-bid contract for maintenance of electronic voting machines. But the Kanawha County clerk believes the maintenance contract, if approved by Secretary of State Natalie Tennant’s office, would be a good deal for taxpayers. Commission President Kent Carper believes the state giving…
West Virginia election officials are negotiating a maintenance contract for the state’s electronic voting machines. In 2005, under the direction of Secretary of State Betty Ireland, election officials entered a single-source contract with Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software to provide touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines. The deal gave ES&S a virtual monopoly on voting…
As part of its Quality Monitoring Program, EAC will investigate the EAC-certified ES&S DS200 Precinct Count Optical Scanner (Firmware Version 1.3.10.0) contained in the ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 for possible non-conformities with the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Download correspondence related to the investigation and a timeline of activities leading up to it. Learn more about EAC’s…
U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, chairman of the Senate committee that oversees election issues, today applauded the Department of Justice’s decision to require Election Systems & Software to sell off the voting systems unit it purchased from Diebold last November. The consent decree in this case lasts for ten years, ensuring that competition is protected in the voting system industry. Schumer raised serious questions about the merger of ES&S Inc. and Premier Election Systems when it was first revealed in September 2009, because it created one company that would control at least 70 percent of the U.S. market for voting systems. The merger had been completed without any advance notice or consultation with the Justice Department.
“This decision will restore competition to an industry that is critical to our democracy. If left unchallenged, this merger would have created a virtual monopoly that could have done serious harm to the idea of free and fair elections,” Schumer said. “This action will prevent one company from garnering three times the market of its next closest competitor. Localities need choices in their voting machines, just like voters need choices on the ballot.”