Georgia Election Vendors Seek to Win Over Committee Members: Take Two

ATLANTA–Several election equipment vendors made their pitch to committee members Thursday morning at the State Capitol as to why they are the best fit to guide the Peach State’s next voting system.

The committee consists of two co-chairs, state Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, and state Rep. Victor Anderson, R-Cornelia.

Voting Works Seeks to Win Over Committee Members

After some introductory comments and state Sen. Bo Hatchett’s prayer, the first vendor to present, Voting Works, sought to win over the committee members and implement its products in all of Georgia’s counties.

Emphasizing the need to ensure election integrity, Ben Adida, executive director for the organization, said, “We’re here to focus on the mission of trustworthy elections before the profit.”

Adida boasted of the company’s VVSG (Voluntary Voting System Guidelines) 2.0 certification, something that sets it ahead in the election industry.

According to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), these guidelines “are a set of specifications and requirements against which voting systems can be tested to determine if they meet required standards.” The 2.0 VVSG standard was accepted by Election Assistance Commission commissioners in February of 2021.

Adida continued to say, “The biggest change that the people of Georgia have asked for, and that you are asking us to consider is the move to hand-marked paper ballots with ballot-on-demand printing at the point of voting.”

Adida highlighted the significant change to hand-marked paper ballots for voters, saying, “Almost all of them [voters] in 2028 will vote by hand-marking a ballot.”

Speaking on expectations for the next voting system, he continued to say, “You have the opportunity in Georgia, as you push for more election transparency, to require that your next voting system by fully open-source, disclosed source-code to the public.”

Adida’s recommendations boiled down to “VVSG 2.0 certification, independent evaluators for security, robustness, and readiness for Georgia, testing with your local county officials, commercial off-the-shelf reports from vendors [and] open source so you can lead the way in transparency of your future voting system.”

Liberty Vote and KNOWiNK Make Their Pitch …

The next vendors to make their pitch were Liberty Vote and KNOWiNK. Liberty Vote bought out its predecessor, Dominion Voting Systems, following the controversies that surfaced surrounding the 2020 presidential election results.

Scott Leiendecker, founder and CEO of KNOWiNK and owner of Liberty Vote, spoke earlier in the conversation, highlighting that they were the first company to bring about “the first federally-certified electronic poll book in the United States.”

The “poll pad itself is in 31 states,” Trisha Bandstra, vice president of sales at KNOWiNK, said.

She also highlighted the strong security of the system. “We’ve never had a cradle point in a polling location or had any sort of internet connectivity to be able to print ballots,” Bandstra said. “The number one reason being is because of security.”

Blake Luna, director of product strategy at KNOWiNK, also highlighted a feature that allows for “a running log of every print that occurs. [This] allows us to be able to go back and look at every single print that occurred directly on this device.”

Liberty Vote presented next, and Bryan Hoffman, vice president of sales for the company, spoke about their new platform. “It’s called Frontier,” Hoffman said. “It’s the newest election system designed by Liberty Vote, and it’s built around the desire to have paper ballots for all voters, and it will fully meet the VVSG 2.0 standards.”

Later in the presentation, Robert “Bob” Giles, vice president of certification and compliance, spoke about the current VVSG certification that the equipment has. He noted the current certification level of the “Democracy Suite 55-A system…[that has been] certified to VVSG 1.1, and it incorporates functionality aligned with VVSG 2.0 requirements.”

He also added, “Our Liberty Vote VVSG 2.0 system, Frontier 1.0 now is in for [Election Assistance Commission] certification testing and is expected to be certified in December of this year, with deployments following shortly thereafter.”

Clear Ballot Makes Software Boasts and More

The next vendor that sought to win over the committee members was Clear Ballot.

Helen Michaud, vice president of product, noted that “it is currently in certification [and] is being tested to VVSG 2.0 standards.”

Michaud boasted of the company being “born in the age of the hand-marked ballot. So, we have always been built around the full-face paper ballot.”

Following the company’s presentation, Burns raised the question of software updates. He said, “How do you anticipate updates, and what would be the timeframe for that and the potential investment by the state of Georgia?”

Jay Bollenbacher, vice president of professional services for the company, answered, “Everything would come with the most current software. We would want to load that in state, verify it, have it verified by the state and then deployed out to the jurisdiction. But when it comes down to updates, counties can certainly do that on their own.”

“We don’t hold the keys to that.”

Last but Not Least, Civera …

After Adam Friedman, Civera founder and CEO of the organization, focused “on the core substance of your election infrastructure, all the hardware, [and] the election management,” he noted, “there’s this neglected, last mile of the process, which is public reporting and engagement.”

“That gap has been a key driver in the political, cultural meltdown that we’ve experienced in this country.”

After Friedman explained some of the different products Civera offers, such as Ballot Verifier and Election Stats, Burns asked about the difference between Ballot Verifier and what the Secretary of State’s Office does, which provides “ballot images available publicly so than an individual could access those and look at any contest, but they would have to manually go through that.”

Friedman replied, “What the state’s doing now is effectively a file drop. Our view takes that data and actually presents it in a way that’s usable. We’ve already done that work for your voters.”

“We’re presenting those ballots next to their cast vote record and connecting it to the contest results above.”

The Future of Georgia’s Election System

At the end of the presentations, Anderson made clear to reporters that they’re not concerned with specific vendors. “We’re looking at features, benefits, [and] we’re looking at things that we’ve got to consider for a recommendation for specifications.”

He went further and clarified that “The actual selection of what system Georgia will go to, that’s the next step in this process.”

Later in the conversation, Burns told reporters that this process is important because “11 million Georgians depend on it, 7 million voters. We’re in the middle of early voting right now.”

The committee will reconvene on Thursday, Oct. 29, at the State Capitol for its next meeting.

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