When Klickitat County voters mark their next mail-in ballots, counting will be handled by the new Verity® Voting system from long-time election partner Hart InterCivic. Verity, gaining momentum among Washington locales, was chosen over other election systems for its security, reliability and technical support.
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“We weighed a number of factors in replacing our older equipment. We saw demonstrations, went to the election conference and talked with other users. Verity’s features met our needs,” said County Auditor Brenda Sorensen, who has more than 40 years’ experience working in elections and is in her 13th year serving Klickitat County.
“Klickitat County has chosen the most efficient and trustworthy scanning system on the market, and we appreciate the County’s continued confidence in Hart,” said Phillip Braithwaite, President and CEO of Hart InterCivic, a U.S. company with more than 100 years of experience providing election solutions. “We are pleased to see another Washington county choose Verity. Asotin and Clark counties have recently switched to Verity as well,” he said.
Hart pioneered digital ballot scanning, and the company’s decade-plus experience with the technology has strongly influenced Verity’s design. Verity’s hardware and software features make by-mail voting secure and transparent. A main component of the U.S.-built system is Verity Central, with streamlined workflow, logical onscreen adjudication and no ballot pre-sorting required. The high-speed digital scanning and adjudication solution combines advanced software with Hart-integrated, enterprise-grade scanners from Canon. See Verity Central in action here.
“ADA accessibility and ease of programming for election staff were also important considerations,” Sorensen said. “We like Verity’s ease of use and security features. Hart has great customer service.”
Klickitat County will begin acceptance testing and training in late February and may vote using Verity as early as April if a special election is called. Otherwise, they expect to debut the system in August.
“We’re looking forward to continuing our journey with Hart. They are there whenever we need them, and customer service is excellent. Their technical support is everything we expect, and we are confident because of our history with them,” said Sorensen, who has worked with Hart in Klickitat County since 2007 and at another jurisdiction before then.
Election Administrator Brandie Sullivan agreed: “Hart’s customer support is amazing.”
Federally and state certified since 2015, Verity is in use in numerous jurisdictions throughout the U.S. Braithwaite expects more announcements as a growing number of counties choose Verity over other options.
Sorensen suggests that those counties considering new election systems look hard at security and election integrity features. “Check out customer support reviews, technical support reviews and usability features. Those are the factors we compared.”