AUSTIN, Texas, March 4, 2021 – When voters in Hood and Sabine counties go to the polls on May 1, they will be casting their ballots for the first time using the Verity® Voting system from Hart InterCivic, a leading election provider gaining momentum in the United States. Both counties recently chose Hart to replace outdated equipment from ES&S. Election officials cited voting integrity, customer service and ease of use as factors in their decisions to switch.
“Verity’s paper trail option is the best to meet our voters’ needs,” said Hood County Elections Administrator Michele Carew. “Voting security is number one on everyone’s mind and we wanted security features that make the voter feel like their ballot is being cast the way they want. They want paper. They want to see it, touch it, read it before they cast it. Hart offered all of that.”
Hood County will rely on Verity Duo, a ballot marking device that that produces a voter-verifiable paper trail. Other systems, rely on converting voters’ choices to barcodes to be interpreted by computer, an approach some security officials have questioned. For example, Colorado banned the use of barcodes for counting votes over security concerns in 2019.
In Sabine County, Deputy Election Clerk Angie Garza is looking forward to Verity’s user-friendly technology and convenient design. “Verity is lightweight and easy to transport and that is important for our office. Our precincts are spread out and my staff does all of the setup.”
When it came time to upgrade Sabine County’s outdated election system, Garza talked to her counterpart in neighboring San Augustine County, which switched to Hart in 2019. “Hearing from someone who has been through a transition, doing research is important. They have been very happy with Hart and told me that customer service has been great.”
Hart’s reputation for customer support continues to be a strong factor for long-time and new users. Carew is both. Since 2007, she has worked with Hart systems as an election official in Parker and Aransas counties and will soon be using Verity in Hood County, where she started work in September.
“Picking Verity was the county’s choice, and I was so happy with our commissioners’ decision. Hart’s customer service is cream of the crop, always top notch,” she said. Both vendors made demos and presentations to the public as part of the selection process. “We had a good turnout and (the Hart representative) had to talk nonstop for four hours.”
“Our commissioners also liked that Verity is made in the USA. Hart is a Texas-based company, and their help is easy to access,” Carew added. “That was a selling point.”
“Welcome to the Hart family! We look forward to sharing our brand of customer support, backing the best voting technology available,” said Julie Mathis, CEO of Hart InterCivic, an Austin-based company with more than 100 years of experience providing election solutions.
“Nearly 90% of customers who have switched from other companies say Hart is more responsive and helpful and we think Hood and Sabine counties will agree.”
“Our election partners set a high bar for up-to-date, secure voting technology and demand the most responsive customer service. We understand that transitions can be complex, and we provide top-tier professional service to help customers adapt to new technology and processes,” Mathis added.
For more information about the Verity Voting system, please visit
An Industry Statement from U.S. Voting System Providers
February 10, 2021 – As U.S. voting system providers, we commend the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) formal adoption today of the nation’s newest Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines, the VVSG 2.0. This step is a significant achievement in completing the first phase of a years-long process by establishing benchmarks for developing, testing and certifying next-generation voting systems in the United States. It also leverages adherence to measurable technical standards that will bolster overall system security while also enhancing voter confidence (ballots counted as cast).
VVSG 2.0 would not be possible without EAC and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) governance combined with proactive consultation with election officials, scientists, academia, advocacy groups, security experts and election technology providers.
In light of this accomplishment, we encourage the EAC to work closely with the election technology and election administration communities to guide the next steps in the VVSG 2.0 adoption process, including:
- Determining a reasonable and practical implementation framework that can be successfully applied to currently operational voting systems, particularly those systems purchased with the $400 million federal investment in new Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grants provided to states and local jurisdictions by Congress via the CARES Act in March 2020.
- Assisting independent Voting System Test Labs (VSTLs) in developing a process for achieving accreditation to efficiently test to the new VVSG 2.0 mandates.
- Working with technology providers to finalize their review of the requirements in order to design and build VVSG 2.0-compliant systems over the coming years, and to work with jurisdictions to mutually agree on and establish reasonable implementation timeframes while these jurisdictions continue to administer secure, accurate and transparent elections with integrity.
The full implementation of VVSG 2.0 will eventually establish new benchmarks for usability, security and verifiability of federally-certified voting systems. These standards will continue to assure voters that such systems are secure, accessible, transparent, accurate, reliable and resilient. Election jurisdictions should consult with their product and service system providers to determine the exact scope of projected timing.
For more information, contact:
Clear Ballot | media@clearballot.com
Dominion Voting Systems |media@dominionvoting.com | 866-654-VOTE (8683)
ES&S | media@essvote.com | 402-938-1300
Hart InterCivic | media@hartic.com | 512-252-6409
MicroVote | media@microvote.com | 800-257-4901
Smartmatic | communications@smartmatic.com
Unisyn Voting Solutions | mktg@unisynvoting.com
Verity is ‘Easy to Learn and Easy to Use’
WIGGINS, Mississippi, February 1, 2021 – Stone County Election Officials are crediting a smooth and secure November election to their decision to upgrade to Hart InterCivic’s new Verity® Voting paper-ballot system, which replaced outdated electronic equipment from another vendor.
The decision came less than two weeks before absentee voting began, a timetable that demanded total confidence in Hart’s system and support. The trusted election system provider delivered both.
“I can’t say enough good about the Hart staff that helped us set up our ballots and trained us so quickly,” said Circuit Clerk Treba Davis. “Verity was so easy to use, so easy to learn. There is no way I’d go with any other system or vendor.”
“We had no issues, and our voters were very comfortable with the new paper ballots. We had a lot of good feedback and they were confident in scanning their own ballots at the polling place,” she added. “Poll workers loved it. Election Commissioners loved it.”
When Davis took office in January 2020, she knew that the county needed a new election system, and it would have been easy to give the existing vendor that contract. But Davis does not believe in taking the easy route without due diligence.
“Just because you are comfortable, doesn’t mean there isn’t a better option out there,” she said. Her research included a conversation with the clerk in Rankin County, the first Mississippi county to choose Verity. She learned that Rankin has had no problems with Verity since they purchased it in 2016.
“I heard good things about Hart and when I saw it in person, I could tell that they developed it by listening to their users. It’s so much better than other equipment we tried. It’s like the difference between a Volkswagen and a BMW,” said Davis, who has worked in the election office for five years. “Their representative gave an excellent presentation, and he was so trustworthy and honest. Clearly, he had nothing to hide. Now that we’ve voted with Verity, I understand his pride in the system.”
Davis also praised the Hart technician who set up their equipment and spent Election Day in Stone County. “It was so smooth; he might have been bored!”
Davis is looking forward to working with Hart on future elections and to learning how to set up an election on her own. “Our interaction with Hart didn’t end with a contract. We have a relationship; they are so knowledgeable and helpful,” she said.
“Relationships are the heart and soul of our business. We are happy to welcome Stone County to the Hart family,” said Julie Mathis, CEO of Hart InterCivic, an Austin-based company with more than 100 years of experience providing election solutions. “We’ve only been in Mississippi since 2016, but our election success is built on generations of experience.”
Davis has advice for jurisdictions planning to replace election equipment: “Hear Hart out. My experience has been wonderful.”
Verity, the most up-to-date technology available in the U.S., is a federally and state certified system designed from the ground up to be flexible, easy to use and secure with all new hardware and software. Stone and Rankin County officials chose a paper-ballot configuration when they purchased Verity. Other jurisdictions across the U.S. have chosen electronic, paper or hybrid arrangements.
For more information about the Verity Voting system, please visit
https://www.hartintercivic.com/better-elections/
Media Contact:
Steven Sockwell
512.252.6409
Longtime Partners Trust Texas Company for Election Upgrades
AUSTIN, Texas, February 2, 2021 – Election system upgrades are accelerating in Texas with 10 new counties choosing Hart InterCivic’s Verity® Voting system for future elections.
Recent announcements from the Texas-based company include Cass, Cherokee, Delta, Fannin, Grimes, Harrison, Marion, Runnels, Throckmorton and Upshur counties. Hart is a long-time election partner in these jurisdictions and has earned the trust of election officials seeking efficient, reliable transitions.
“Verity was born and bred in Texas, and we are proud of our longtime relationships across the state. Many counties think the time is right for Verity’s secure, paper-trail option and we are here for them,” said Julie Mathis, CEO of Hart InterCivic, a growing election system provider with more than 100 years of experience providing election solutions.
Verity is a versatile election system with state-of-the-art hardware and software designed in Austin and based on input from officials across the state, as well as other election experts nationwide. Customer service, ease of use and efficient design are cited by counties choosing the Verity system.
“You couldn’t ask for better customer service,” said Cass County Clerk Amy Varnell, who has worked with Hart systems and personnel since 1994. “Our voters will have confidence in the paper-ballot system.”
Cass County has chosen a ballot-on-demand option and will begin training this spring. “We are looking forward to training and voting with Verity. Everyone we have ever worked with from Hart is fantastic.”
Fannin County Clerk Tammy Biggar is looking forward to the cost effectiveness and efficiency that Verity will provide her jurisdiction. “The competitor’s system design doesn’t allow me to build my own ballot. That’s a deal-breaker. It adds to our costs for the next 10 years. I want control, not an ongoing programming expense.”
Rapidly growing Fannin County chose Verity Duo, a hybrid voting device that combines a touchscreen with a paper vote record available for recounts or audits. The printed ballot can be checked by voters before they feed it into a scanner that reads choices, not a barcode.
Biggar also cited Hart’s integrity and commitment to customers in her county’s choice. “I know our reps face-to-face, and everyone at Hart wants me to have a good election. I once called someone who was already in bed! No problem, I got the help I needed on Election night.”
“This system is simple to understand and we’ve already started training,” she said, also praising Hart’s YouTube videos as extra support in preparation for their May election.
More Texas announcements are expected soon, Mathis said.
“Our Texas partners want the most up-to-date, secure voting technology available and they deserve the most responsive customer service. We deliver both.”
“There is no better choice for Texas voters than Verity,” she said.
For more information about the Verity Voting system, please visit https://www.hartintercivic.com/better-elections/
Media Contact:
Steven Sockwell
512.252.6409
Largest Jurisdiction in Texas Stands by Longtime Election Partner
HOUSTON, Texas, January 28, 2021 – Harris County Commissioners voted unanimously this week to upgrade their election system to paper-trail technology from longtime partner Hart InterCivic. Verity® Voting includes enhanced security features, state-of-the-art software and hardware all designed and manufactured in Austin where the company is headquartered.
“Moving to the Hart InterCivic Verity Voting System gives voters a more accessible, secure and verifiable ballot to improve the voting experience for all Harris County Voters,” said Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria. “My goal is to use the coming weeks to learn and train staff about the Hart voting machines and offer all Harris County voters the opportunity to learn more about the new features.”
The first wave of 2,300 machines is scheduled to be delivered by March 1.
Through a competitive procurement process, the Hart machines were selected by a committee of representatives from Commissioner Court staff, the County Judge and technical experts from the County Clerk and Elections Administrator staff.
“Thank you, Harris County for your continued trust and partnership! We are excited and proud to support your transition to easy-to-use, secure paper-based voting technology,” said Julie Mathis, CEO of Hart InterCivic which has provided election services and solutions to the County for decades.
“Hart and Harris County have a history of innovation and challenges met. We look forward to building on this solid relationship for the benefit of the County’s more than 2.3 million voters,” she said.
The largest voting jurisdiction in Texas, Harris County has selected Verity Duo, a hybrid voting device that combines a touchscreen with a paper vote record available for recounts or audits. The printed ballot can be checked by voters before they feed it into a scanner that reads the voter’s choices, which are never hidden in a barcode.
Verity will also support Harris’ new Vote Centers, which allow any registered voter in the County to cast their Election Day ballot at whichever polling location is most convenient.
“There is no stronger example of Hart’s core values than our long relationship with Harris County,” Mathis said. “Relationships and exceptional customer service drive our success. Our proven, Texas-based products seal the deal. Our partners deserve nothing less.”
For more information about the Verity Voting system, please visit https://www.hartintercivic.com/better-elections/
Media Contact:
Steven Sockwell
512.252.6409
Shortly after the 2000 presidential election, Harris County became one of the country’s early adopters of electronic voting, replacing the error-prone punch-card system implemented in the early 1980s.
Voters lauded the new interface, including the rotary wheel used to operate the machines. Nearly two decades later, Harris County still is using the same equipment, making it the largest county in the United States without an auditable paper trail.
That is set to change as soon as the May 2021 elections, after Commissioners Court on Tuesday unanimously approved a $54 million deal to replace the current eSlate machines with ones featuring touch screens, a paper backup and features that make voting more accessible for seniors and residents with disabilities.
The new machines allow voters to select candidates or ballots measures on a touchpad instead of the rotating wheel, now derided by critics as a clunky feature that some voters mistakenly have used to cast ballots for the wrong candidate.
After voters complete and review their ballots, the machines will print out the selections, at which point voters again can review their ballots for any erroneous choices. They then will take the printed ballots to an electronic ballot box that will record the votes and store the paper ballots, in case the election is called into question and needs to be audited.
“Really, the utility of the paper record is, instead of having to program our machines to spit out receipts, we are getting the record as the voter sees it, into a ballot box that, should we need to count or recount or pull something back later, we can pull it up,” Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria said Wednesday.
The election results will be stored on two separate hard drives for each voting machine, one of which can only be accessed with a special key provided to Longoria’s office. The new safeguards are expected to provide stronger security than the current system, in which votes are recorded on mobile memory cards that are brought to a central counting site, uploaded onto a computer and tallied.
Longoria also said the new machines may provide faster election results, as votes can only be tallied under the current system using an outdated computer processing software with slower processing speeds than what is widely available today. Harris County election nights have famously stretched well past midnight during previous elections because of the pace of the election results being uploaded.
Though Harris County did not experience any major election malfunctions or security issues using the eSlate machines, experts warned that the aging technology would be inadequate if the election were called into question because of a cyberattack or then-President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the 2020 election would be “rigged.”
The new machines will be supplied by Hart InterCivic Inc., the same company that provides the county’s current stock of eSlate voting machines. The new system, called InterCivic Verity Voting, was approved in 2019 by the Texas Secretary of State and already used in Tarrant County.
Under the contract approved Tuesday, Hart will provide Harris County with 12,000 machines and an assortment of other election equipment, including voting booths and ballot boxes.
Among the other upgrades are what officials say will be a more robust voting system for residents with disabilities. Longoria described the existing setup as “primitive,” in which voters use red and green “paddles,” or buttons, that replace the scrolling wheel and enter button.
“Now you’ll have, essentially, a remote control attached to the machine that has directional arrows and multiple buttons, so that folks with a different kind of physical need will have the same access to voting,” Longoria said.
The elections administrator’s office will receive the first shipment of devices by March 1. Longoria and her staff will start familiarizing themselves with the machines and decide whether to use them for the May 2021 local elections. If they opt to wait, the machines would be in place for the March 2022 primaries.
“The really big deciding factor for me is, how long will it take to train all of our internal staff on these new machines to feel comfortable with them? And then the turnaround time for us to develop those training materials so that we can really safely and fairly train up the different clerks and judges that will have to use these on Election Day,” Longoria said.
Before commissioners approved the contract with Hart InterCivic on Tuesday, county officials had declined to release information about the deal or any details about the new machines.
The machines were selected by a committee of representatives from each county commissioner’s office, the county judge and technical experts from the county clerk and elections administrator’s staff, according to Longoria’s office. Longoria defended the lack of available details prior to the vote.
“If you release too much information, if you release too many specifics, then you have lobbyists come out of the woodwork,” she said. “People start, without all the information, really lobbying you, and then there’s always a sense of impropriety.”
Zach Despart contributed to this report.
jasper.scherer@chron.com
As part of its overall commitment to voter confidence and election auditability, every new voting system sold by Hart InterCivic will include an auditable paper ballot. As a direct result, Hart has discontinued the sale of paperless Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems.
Hart InterCivic recognizes that voter confidence is highest where there is a paper record of every vote, and Hart is committed to taking every step possible to protect America’s trust in our country’s elections. Our decision to include a paper trail in every voting system we sell was primarily driven by Hart’s commitment to developing solutions that support software-independent audits, recounts and risk-limiting audits (RLAs), all of which require a paper-based voting system.
“All Hart InterCivic voting machines are tested and secure, but we believe that focusing our efforts on paper-based voting systems is an important step to further enhance voter confidence,” said Julie Mathis, CEO of Hart InterCivic, an Austin-based company with more than 100 years of experience providing election solutions. “The use of paper-based ballots will lead to increased levels of auditability and usability, as well as provide an extra layer of assurance for voters that their votes are being counted as cast. Voter confidence has been and will remain a top priority for all of us at Hart.”
While existing DRE customers will continue to receive support from Hart, we will also enable customers to transition to a paper-based voting system through the unique versatility of the Verity system. Specifically, Verity DRE customers can choose to return their DRE units to Hart where they can be converted to our paper-based Verity Duo units. These new devices, along with new precinct scanners, will allow jurisdictions to transition quickly and easily to paper-based voting in a conversion process that is more cost effective than the purchase of a full new set of equipment. As an added benefit, the voter selections from the paper ballots produced by the Verity system are not hidden in unreadable barcodes or QR codes, but rather are in human readable form. Verity is the only voting system on the market that provides this assurance that votes are captured based on the same information voters can personally read and review.
Please note: The Interos-published report at the heart of this story states “Interos recognizes the extreme sensitivity of election security matters and has contacted the affected company.” Hart InterCivic has never been contacted by Interos and therefore our system is not the one analyzed in their report. To learn more about how Hart specifically manages supply chain and manufacturing security, click here.
The companies that provide the election equipment and technology used in U.S. elections place the highest importance on supply chain security, and proactively take proven, best-practice measures to ensure the sanctity of Americans’ votes:
- All U.S.-registered voting systems manufacturers provide extensive product sourcing information to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and state election offices as part of the certification/testing process. We also work closely with U.S. election officials and other government partners to test and certify our systems for security, accuracy, and reliability in each and every election.
- Voting systems are routinely subjected to rigorous review, analysis, testing and certification by election authorities at the federal, state, and local levels. Once the system software is certified, any changes would prompt a new round of testing by government authorities. This process helps to ensure that product vulnerabilities are discovered and addressed before any systems are placed into use.
- Voting systems manufacturers work individually and collectively to define reasonable levels of security and associated controls for our supply chains, including requiring sub-contractors and vendors to meet or exceed standards as part of the terms and conditions of our established business agreements. We also employ tools and resources to technically and operationally mitigate risk across the lifecycle of products, from design through disposal.
Interos, a company that sells supply chain management services, recently released a marketing report on the security of the election industry supply chain without conducting any research into the protocols and safeguards currently employed by the industry. The only conclusive statement in the release is that “none of [Interos’] findings indicate that the studied machines are compromised in any way.”
Further, the practice of assessing risk based solely – or even primarily – on the geography of a supplier’s corporate locations is a practice that has been widely discredited. Supply chain risks and threats exist regardless of where a company is located, or where its products are manufactured or assembled. As National Risk Management Center (NRMC) Director Bob Kolasky noted in recent testimony on this subject before Congress, “sources of material influence” must be evident.
The election industry welcomes the guidance of cyber and supply chain security experts and, in many instances, have taken significant steps to implement improved policies as a result of hearing from such experts, such as coordinated vulnerability disclosure programs. However, we caution reliance on the findings of a report that purports to expose risks in supply chain practices yet notes that researchers “did not study the exact origin of individual parts or manufacturing location[s].”
Dominion Voting Systems
Election Systems & Software
Hart InterCivic
Smartmatic
Unisyn Voting Solutions