Election Systems & Software (ES&S or ESS) is an Omaha, Nebraska-based company that manufactures and sells voting machine equipment and services. The company's offerings include vote tabulators, DRE voting machines, voter registration and election management systems, ballot-marking devices, electronic poll books, ballot on demand printing services, and absentee voting-by-mail services.

In 2014, ES&S was the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the United States, claiming customers in 4,500 localities in 42 states and two U.S. territories. As of 2014, the company had more than 450 employees, over 200 of whom are located in its Omaha headquarters.

In 2014, ES&S claimed that "in the past decade alone," it had installed more than 260,000 voting systems, more than 15,000 electronic poll books, and provided services to more than 75,000 elections. The company has installed statewide voting systems in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia. As of 2019 ES&S claimed a U.S. market share of more than 60 percent in customer voting system installations.

The company maintains ten facilities in the United States, two field offices in Canada located in Pickering, Ontario and Vancouver, British Columbia, and a warehouse in Jackson, Mississippi.

History

American Information Systems

thumb|An ES&S DS850 8000-ballot-per-hour central-count [[Optical scan voting system|ballot scanner]]

In October 1974, Robert J. Urosevich of Klopp Printing Company in Omaha approached Westinghouse Learning Corporation, a subsidiary of Westinghouse Corporation, asking whether the scanners Westinghouse was building for educational tests could be used to scan voting ballots. This led Westinghouse to briefly enter the ballot scanning business, and Urosevich and his brother Tod, a former IBM salesman, formed Data Mark Systems to sell and service Westinghouse voter tabulation equipment. Data Mark and Westinghouse ballot tabulation equipment had limited success through the late 1970s.

As Westinghouse withdrew from the voting business, the Urosevich brothers and several former Westinghouse employees founded a new company in August 1979, American Information Systems (AIS). AIS came out with a line of central-count ballot scanners that entered the marketplace in 1982.

Business Records Corporation

The first precinct-count ballot scanner was the Gyrex MTB-1, which came to market around 1974. The MTB-1 evolved into the MTB-2, and corporate ownership shifted from Gyrex Corporation to Valtec, in 1977, and then to Major Data Concepts, in 1979. Computer Election Systems Incorporated (CESI), the manufacturer of Votomatic punched-card voting equipment, marketed the MTB-2 as the Tally-II scanner in the early 1980s, pairing it with its own Precinct-Ballot-Conut punched-card ballot reader, the PBC.

CESI developed its own family of precinct-count and later central-count scanners, under the Optech brand name. The Optech I precinct-count scanner came to market in 1983, and saw successful use in several states. Cronus Industries, Inc., a Texas-based company, purchased CESI in 1985 and merged it with their ballot printing subsidiary, Business Records Corporation (BRC).

Cronus Industries

Cronus Industries was formed in September 1976. Cronus, named after the Greek god Cronus, was an offshoot of Dallas, Texas-based company Tyler Corporation, which was previously a high tech military contractor known as Saturn Industries. Throughout the 1980s, its subsidiary, Business Records Corporation (BRC), acquired multiple small private companies that focused on providing information for local and county governments in the United States, including land records, election equipment and government software. In 1984, Cronus acquired a steel-coating plant in Fairfield, Alabama from U.S. Steel. Between 1985 and 1986, Cronus acquired Computer Election Systems (CES) and eight other election equipment companies. After acquiring CES, Cronus chairman and CEO C. A. Rundell, Jr. claimed in 1985 that the company controlled 40% of the election equipment market in the United States, but refused to share a similar answer in 1988.

CES was founded in 1969 intending to focus on BRC. and created by her estate trust, purchased a 6% stake in Cronus Industries. In the 1980s, Rosewood also had ownership in PVH Corp., First Executive, and IMC Global. According to a spokesman for Rosewood, Hunt did not take an active role in managing the company. a position he held until his death in 1998. He owned $10 million in company securities in 1988,

In 1996, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission sent a cease-and-desist letter to an investor, Alexander Sheshunoff, Sr., accusing him of market manipulation by attempting to influence the closing price of BRC between 1990 and 1995. He owned 5.32% of BRC common stock in 1989 and 8.05% of common stock in 1994.

Automark Technical Systems LLC

thumb|An AutoMARK [[ballot marking device]]

In 2003, Eugene Cummings filed a patent for a ballot marking device designed to provide an accessible voting interface for optical-scan voting systems.

Cummings, along with Joseph Vaneck founded Automark Technical Systems LLC to develop and manufacture the machine. Prior to this machine, the Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002, required jurisdictions in the United States that used optical scan systems install at least one DRE voting machine in each polling place.

Mergers and antitrust actions

thumb|An iVotronic [[DRE voting machine with a real-time audit log printer, a type of voter-verified paper audit trail]]

American Information Systems acquired the Election Services Division of Business Records Corporation and was reincorporated as Election Systems & Software, Inc. in December 1997. At the time, AIS had about 750 customers and BRC had around 1200; customers were typically county election offices. With the merger, ES&S became the largest voting system vendor in the United States. The merger was delayed by the U.S. Department of Justice on antitrust grounds until ES&S agreed to transfer the Optech product line to Sequoia Voting Systems, while retaining the right to sell and service Optech products to its existing customers.

ES&S was one of the top four providers of voting equipment used in the November 2004 election. The other three were Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Hart InterCivic.

In January 2008, ES&S acquired AutoMARK Technical Systems. Under ES&S's ownership, AutoMARK's use expanded considerably. Eight years after its acquisition by ES&S, in the 2016 elections, it was used statewide in ten states, and widely used in 19 additional states.

In September 2009, ES&S acquired Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold Election Systems. Following the acquisition, the Department of Justice and 14 individual states launched investigations into the transaction on antitrust grounds.

In March 2010, the Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against ES&S, seeking it to divest voting equipment systems assets it purchased in September 2009 from Premier Election Solutions in order to restore sufficient competition. The company later sold the assets to Dominion Voting Systems.

Recent history (1998-present)

ES&S had revenue of over $80 million in 1998, but declined to report revenue in 2014. Aldo Tesi was CEO from 2000-2015.

Texas Instruments supplies one of the chips used by ES&S. One of the company's "programmable logic devices" is from a United States-based firm with a factory in China.

Among other organizations, John Gottschalk was on the board for ES&S, the McCarthy Group, and the Kiewit Institute. Gottschalk recruited Chuck Hagel to join AIS in 1992.

For the 2000 United States elections, chairman Bill Welsh stated that, as preparation for any issues, ES&S had four business planes, two turboprops, and over 1,000 temporary workers (including some from Offut Air Force Base) on standby. By 2001, ES&S had installed equipment internationally, including Venezuela, Guam, the Republic of Palau, Canada, and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

As of October 2019, ES&S controls about 50% of the election system market of the United States; makes most of its money from long-term maintenance contracts; has filed lawsuits when it fails to win contracts or has them taken away; hired former election officials as lobbyists; donated to political campaigns and lobbied politicians; and threatened lawsuits against voting rights activists and security researchers. Between 2013 and 2020, ES&S has donated at least $30,000 to the Republican State Leadership Committee.

Ownership and management

As of June 2019, ES&S was wholly owned by Government Systems, Software & Services, Inc. McCarthy Group held a controlling ownership. Those with over 5% share investments in the company, as of June 2019, included Tom Burt and Tom O'Brien. Those with over 5% ownership stakes in McCarthy Group were Nancy McCarthy and Kenneth Stinson, both passive investors.

As of 2020, Burt is president and chief executive officer of ES&S,

ES&S was founded by Republicans was financed by the families of Howard Ahmanson Jr. and Nelson Bunker Hunt, is owned by a private equity firm, McCarthy Group, Chuck Hagel was chairman of a predecessor company to ES&S, and the treasurer for Hagel's campaign during the 1996 United States Senate election in Nebraska, Michael McCarthy, was the founder of McCarthy Group. According to Bev Harris' book on black box voting, ES&S is tied to Kiewit Corporation, which as of 2004 was involved in a number of bid rigging scandals; advocated for privatization of highways in the United States; owned CalEnergy, and was heavily involved in telecommunications via its ties to Level 3 Communications and installations of fiber-optic cables underneath highways and video surveillance cameras on roads. The Omaha World-Herald newspaper owned a stake in ES&S between 1986 and 2011. The Peter Kiewit Foundation in turn owned the Omaha World-Herald as of 2004. McCarthy Group is an investment fund based in Omaha, Nebraska and founded in 1986 by Michael McCarthy The Nation described McCarthy Group as being "identified with Republican causes." McCarthy Capital, a private equity firm, has been described as "the operating arm of McCarthy Group". Hagel had reported to the United States Senate that his investments in McCarthy Group were valued between $1 million and $5 million. As of 2004, per the Center for Responsive Politics, the CEO of McCarthy Group, Michael McCarthy, had donated $28,750 to Republican politicians and candidates and $0 to Democratic politicians and candidates. Between 1999 and 2004, employees and executives donated $74,245 to Republicans and $13,300 to Democrats. Peter Kiewit Sons', Inc. and Cabela's.

Other board members as of the late 2000s included Bob Bates, Margie Doyle, John Gottschalk, Howard Hawks, Rich Jarvis, Gerald Timmerman, Norm Waitt, Dana Bradford, In Hutchinson's case, Judge Charles Harold Haden II, whose wife was the chairperson of Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign in West Virginia, disallowed evidence of security vulnerabilities and other flaws, ruled that the charges of fraud were "speculative", and ordered the plaintiffs to pay legal fees for CES and other defendants.

AIS

1996 United States Senate election in Nebraska

Hagel had stepped down from ES&S two weeks before he announced his run for Senate. However, he kept several millions of dollars in stock in McCarthy Group, the owner of ES&S. During the race, Hagel at first had lower poll ratings than the Democratic governor Ben Nelson. Three days before the election, an Omaha World-Herald poll showed that both candidates had 47% favorability ratings. Hagel had won the election by 15 percentage points, which was widely described as an "upset" since this election was the first that the Republican Party had won a Senate seat in Nebraska since 1978. including missing votes, potential duplicate votes, poor calibration of touch screens leading to misinterpreted votes, incorrectly printed ballots and outdated technology.

The Institute for Southern Studies reported that, during the 2000 Venezuelan general election, Hugo Chávez and Venezuelan election officials accused ES&S of interference due to widespread issues with the company's voting machines. According to the Verified Voting Foundation, all voting equipment used in that county on Election Day 2014 was manufactured by ES&S.

Concerns have also been raised by Ron Wyden about the security of its supply chain, as many parts were made in China and the Philippines. After the 2016 election, Jill Stein alleged that ES&S machines were vulnerable to hacking and difficult to audit, points supported by researchers. Issues with ES&S machines have also been reported during elections in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

In January 2020, NBC News reported that election security experts found at least 35 voting machines that were connected to the Internet as of the summer of 2019. While ES&S, Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic have all admitted to adding modems in some of their tabulators and scanners (for the purpose of quickly sharing unofficial election results), all of the voting machines that were accessible online were manufactured by ES&S and located in 11 states (including Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan) and Washington D.C. Some of these machines have been connected for months or possibly years at a time. Critical systems connected to the Internet via a firewall include vote tabulators and "the election-management system that is used in some counties to program voting machines before elections." Other security vulnerabilities - including missing firewall security patches, outdated SFTP server software, remote-access software, outdated operating systems, exposed passwords, exposed data of registered voters, no logging of some events, hash verification issues (noting that the hash verification was performed by ES&S instead of its customers), ballot marking device/scanner "hybrid" systems that can be changed with fake votes on machine-marked ballots after those ballots are cast, accessible SD and USB ports, plain text encryption keys for voter data, no set BIOS passwords, disabled Secureboot, presence of bloatware, no tamper-evident seals, immediate root access, unencrypted hard drives, use of simple default passwords, immutable passwords set such that "the same two passwords were used for every machine manufactured", susceptibility of central scanners to vote flipping, and "poor physical security protections that could allow undetected tampering" - were also reported. Free Press also warned of multiple vulnerabilities from electronic pollbooks manufactured by ES&S, including the possibility of compromised network infrastructure, voting machines, registration servers, voter data and/or the privacy of votes, as well as the risk of voter suppression.

A December 2020 investigation by DCReport found that the 2020 re-elections of Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins had all occurred in states where votes were primarily tabulated by ES&S, arguing that their wins were improbable due to low or close pre-election polls. In the case of McConnell, DCReport found large vote leads in counties that had typically voted for Democrats (including in counties in which he had not previously won); discrepancies related to split-ticket voting; and issues with Kentucky voter records. McConnell had blocked legislation in the Senate for election security in 2019, the same year that his campaign committee received at least $2,000 from ES&S. A further investigation by the same outlet later that month found that multiple ES&S executives and lobbyists are connected with Republican party politicians and election officials (such as Sandra Mortham, A 2021 article also noted that several Republican officials had refused to purchase equipment from Dominion due to false claims of fraud during the 2020 United States presidential election, alleging that ES&S would benefit by increasing its market share.

2024 United States elections

During the 2024 elections, ES&S voting machines in Cambria County, Pennsylvania had issues scanning ballots due to a "ballot printing error", "[causing] voter confusion, long lines of voters, and many individuals [leaving] the polling locations without casting a ballot". The county's election director had retired on the same day that the election results were certified. State Representative Frank Burns called for an investigation by the Pennsylvania Department of State, and had asked for records about the ballots, voting machines, testing and internal communications, but his right to know request was denied by county election officials. By April 2025, the new county elections director had found a certification document stating that pre-election tests on voting machines were successfully completed in September 2024. Burns expressed concern why election officials were not aware of this document.

The Navajo Nation in Apache County, Arizona reported issues with voting machines and ballot printers on Election Day, leading to long lines that resulted in some voters being turned away. According to the Verified Voting Foundation, all voting equipment used in that county on Election Day 2024 was manufactured by ES&S. Similarly, there were issues with voting machines on Election Day in Queens, New York, a county that also used ES&S at the time.

In December 2024, the state of Texas decertified ES&S pollbooks due to widespread errors during the 2024 United States elections.

Campaign contributions

In the early 1990s, it was reported that Oklahoma County, Oklahoma Clerk Ralph Hess did not report a $1,000 contribution from BRC's political action committee. Then-BRC president Esping also contributed $100 and another employee donated $400, the latter of which was under-reported.

Antitrust investigation

In 1980, the antitrust division of the United States Department of Justice investigated CES, but the investigation ceased in January or February of 1981. Then CES-president David L. Dunbar said, "I used to kid people we had to get Ronald Reagan elected to get this thing killed."

Voting system certifications

In May 2013, the Election Assistance Commission certified ES&S' EVS 5.0 election management system as meeting the commission's 2005 Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG). Products included in EVS 5.0 are ES&S' DS200 and DS850 vote tabulators.

EVS 5.0 also saw enhancements to the company's AutoMARK software, which is designed to be compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 for allowing voters with disabilities to cast ballots. In October 2012, the EAC certified ES&S' Unity 3.4.0.0 election management software.

In June 2014, the Virginia Board of Elections certified EVS 5201, the first state to certify an election management system that features the ExpressVote Universal Voting System. This election system combines paper-based voting with touch screen technology that's designed to serve every eligible voter, including those with disabilities.

The same month, following the certification of EVS 5201 was certified, Fairfax County, Virginia, purchased ExpressVote Universal Voting System. which it used for the first time in its November 2014 general election.

Electronic poll books

In January 2014, the City of Chicago reached an agreement with ES&S to provide more than 2,100 ExpressPoll voter check-in and verification devices to support Chicago's 1.6 million registered voters. The electronic poll books were first used in Chicago's 2014 primary elections.

Withdrawal and Reinstatement of InkaVote

On August 3, 2007, California Secretary of state Debra Bowen withdrew approval of the ES&S InkaVote Plus after announcing a "top-to-bottom review" of the voting machines certified for use in California in March 2007.

However, the InkaVote Plus was never included in the review process conducted by Bowen's office. Bowen then approved InkaVote Plus for use by Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles on January 2, 2008.

Oakland County, Michigan

Early voters in the 2008 U.S. presidential election in Oakland County, Michigan reported instances of malfunctioning machines, The Oakland County county clerk reported inconsistent results with some machines during testing in October.

Four years later, during the 2012 elections, ES&S added wireless modem technology so officials could make secure reports via cell phones. This upgrade was designed to improve the transparency and accuracy of Oakland County's election night reporting. The wireless technology used by Oakland County was tested by a federally accredited voting system test laboratory and subsequently tested and approved by the State of Michigan for pilot usage in the 2012 presidential election.

2010 election problems

On April 14, 2010, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that, "about 10 percent of Cuyahoga County’s voting machines...[had] failed a pre-election test." After 20 months of investigation, the Election Assistance Commission recommended decertification of the ES&S voting machines if they could not be fixed. The investigation found:

  • "The DS200 accepts a voted ballot but does not record the ballot on its internal counter. In addition the marks of the second ballot are not recorded."
  • "When a 17” ballot was inserted at an angle, the DS200 did not consistently count the mark properly. The mark registered either as a different selection than intended or did not register at all."
  • The system randomly freezes and does not record the freeze in its log files. There are other events not logged, such as touch screen calibration.

In May 2013, however, the Election Assistance Commission certified the DS200 as part of ES&S' EVS 5.0 election management system as meeting its 2005 Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG). Image of EAC certificate

Remote access controversy

In February 2018 article, The New York Times, reported that remote-access software had been found on an election management computer system used in Pennsylvania, and quoted unnamed sources, who said "ES&S has in the past sometimes sold its election-management system with remote-access software preinstalled." This was used by ES&S technicians to remotely access the systems via modem to troubleshoot and provide maintenance to systems they sold. The company denied this, saying "none of the employees...including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software." The letter to Wyden had been in response to a question from the senator requesting clarification of the information on remote-access software in the New York Times article.

Operating software vulnerabilities

In July 2019, the Associated Press reported that, "the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes and report counts." Windows 7 reaches its "end of life" on January 14, 2020, meaning that Microsoft will cease providing technical support for the system, including patches to fix software vulnerabilities. For jurisdictions that already purchased systems running on Windows 7, ES&S said it would work with Microsoft to provide support until jurisdictions can update them. Windows 10 was released in 2015, and it was not immediately clear how long it would take to updates and associated federal and possible state certifications and to roll out updates. The company was not at the time sure that it could be done prior to the state's primaries, which began in February 2020. Kevin Skoglund, chief technologist at Citizens for Better Elections, said county election officials point to Election Assistance Commission and state certifications as "rock-solid proof" that their systems are secure, but do not realize that vendors are certifying systems under dated 2005 standards.

Modems and certification claims

In 2020, an independent cybersecurity investigation by the National Election Defense Coalition found voting systems still online, contrary to claims by election officials. ES&S was one of three companies, including Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, that still put modems in their machines, many of which are protected by firewalls. Security officials maintain that such firewalls can still be breached. The National Institute of Standards and Technology advises that all voting systems should be prevented from connecting to wireless networks. National Election Defense Coalition identified ES&S as having sold machines with wireless modems to at least 11 states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. In 2020, ES&S informed NBC News that 14,000 DS200 tabulators with online modems were in use, a statement that contradicts their own website. NBC News also found thousands more online made by other companies. Groups like Free Speech for People and the National Election Defense Coalition maintain that ES&S falsely claims their online machines are certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The Commission does not certify voting machines with modems.

See also

  • Election security
  • Electronic voting
  • Voting technology in New York State
  • Voting machine

References

  • Official website
  • McCarthy Capital website