The idea was to triple-check this year’s presidential election results by uploading images of every ballot cast in Georgia, scanning them with text-recognition software and creating an independent vote count.
Lawmakers budgeted $5 million for the concept that would verify the results generated by the state’s Dominion Voting Systems equipment, an extra step beyond an existing hand-count audit of a statistical sample of ballots.
But the recount-by-software plan is now stalled because of a protest by a company that wasn’t chosen to receive the state’s contract. It’s unclear whether the dispute will be resolved in time for November’s election.
The winning company, Enhanced Voting, told the state it could do the job this year for $1.5 million, one-third of the $4.6 million bid by Clear Ballot. In its protest, Clear Ballot says it’s more qualified and that its competitor hired former Clear Ballot employees who could be depending on patented technology.
Until the protest is resolved, the contract can’t be finalized and the audit will be on hold, even though it’s required by a state law passed this year.
Legislators and election officials said they hope the dispute can be resolved in time for November’s election. The audit was scheduled to be completed Nov. 21, the day before statewide certification of the presidential election.
“We’re going to resolve it and we’re going to get back on track. We’re not off-track yet,” said Senate Ethics Chairman Max Burns, a Republican from Sylvania whose committee approved House Bill 974. “I’m confident we’re going to have that system in place in November to verify the ballot. That will add reassurance to voters.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Enhanced Voting declined to comment on the ongoing procurement process.
Clear Ballot CEO Bob Hoyt said Georgia should have chosen his company’s technology, which has been used in states such as Maryland and South Carolina. Hoyt questioned whether Enhanced Voting would be able to provide software that fully satisfies the state’s requirements.
“A small company that’s never done it before won’t withstand the scrutiny of the press and voters’ trust,” Hoyt said. “I deeply care that Georgia has a good election, and I don’t want a company that’s not ready to do this yet and attributes all their knowledge for doing an audit to their training at Clear Ballot.”
The protest process is underway, but it’s uncertain how quickly an administrative law judge would hear the case and issue a ruling. Hoyt said he didn’t think the case would last beyond Election Day, and he suggested he probably wouldn’t contest it further in superior court if he loses the protest.
Demands for greater scrutiny of elections — almost exclusively from Republicans — have grown since GOP President Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes in the 2020 election.
Three vote counts, including a manual tally of all 5 million ballots, showed that Biden won. Since then, investigations have uncovered errors that didn’t change the outcome, such as double-scanned ballots during Fulton County’s audit and recount.
State election investigations have dismissed Trump team allegations of drop box ballot stuffing, counterfeit ballots and dead voters, but that hasn’t stopped the Republican majority in the General Assembly from changing voting laws each year since 2020.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The new auditing technology would be the latest step to validate elections or uncover problems.
Dominion’s ballot scanners already create ballot images — pictures of each ballot — that election officials would then load for auditing. The computers would use optical character recognition to read voters’ choices on each ballot and identify discrepancies with the official count.
If inconsistencies are found, detailed comparisons would allow election officials to find out what went wrong.
The price disparity between the two audit companies increased when including potential costs for a more permanent audit process, such as installing the technology in each county or continuing to rely on cloud computing.
Clear Ballot’s total bid was $10.8 million, compared with Enhanced Voting’s $4.8 million bid, according to procurement documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through the Georgia Open Records Act.
State Election Board Chair John Fervier said the technology was supposed to be ready in time for this year’s presidential election.
“It’s clearly something that the Legislature wanted, funded and wanted to occur. We were going down that road,” Fervier said. “The board was interested in this occurring, and it’s unfortunate that this protest has happened.”
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