AUSTIN, Texas, February 13, 2020 – The Verity® Voting system from Hart InterCivic is gaining ground as a leading election provider in the United States, with about 40% of new Verity customers leaving competing vendors for Hart.
A survey, conducted in January 2020, of customers who switched from other companies to Verity showed that 93% feel they have had a better overall experience with Hart.
“Not only do our election partners want the most up-to-date, secure voting technology available, they demand and deserve 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,” said Julie Mathis, CEO of Hart InterCivic, an Austin-based company with more than 100 years of experience providing election solutions.
“Other election vendors cannot honestly make these claims. Nearly 90% of our customers who have switched say Hart is more responsive and helpful. We are proud of this record, and we’re shooting for 100%.”
Recently, Hart has seen an increase in counties choosing Verity to replace older technology from other vendors.
Canyon County, Idaho, will replace their ES&S system with Verity for the March 10 primary.
“I am tired of Canyon County being the example of elections going badly,” Commissioner Pam White said during the approval process for Verity and quoted in the Idaho Press.
“Canyon County has historically had multiple problems during elections, including late nights of ballot counting — the county finished counting ballots after 3 a.m. one election night in 2018 and at 7 a.m. the next morning in 2017. In 2018, the elections office forgot to count 39 ballots from overseas citizens and active members of the military on election night,” the paper reported.
Verity will eliminate most of the human error that comes with having election poll workers distribute ballots, Haley Hicks, elections supervisor for Canyon County, told the newspaper.
With 94,000 registered voters, Canyon County will rely on Verity Duo, a ballot marking device that tabulates votes from human-verifiable information, not a black box barcode or QR code.
Other systems rely on converting voters’ choices to barcodes to be interpreted by computer, an approach some security officials have questioned. Last year, Colorado banned the use of barcodes for counting votes over security concerns and other jurisdictions are considering similar restrictions.
On Election Day in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, an improperly calibrated barcode system resulted in 26,000 votes in a highly contested race being incorrectly counted. This forced officials to hand count the paper records overnight to determine official results before they could be released to the public.
“We chose to build a product that tabulates votes the right way — our competitors didn’t.” said Jim Canter, Chief Technology Officer at Hart InterCivic.
In North Carolina, a new territory for Hart, Union County also is replacing an aging ES&S system with a Verity paper trail solution. With 147,000 registered voters, Union joins Brunswick, Chatham and Caswell counties in updating to the Hart InterCivic system. Onslow County will test Verity in the primary.
In Texas, where Verity is designed and manufactured, Ward County is the latest jurisdiction to leave ES&S for Hart. Voters in Ward County will hand mark their paper ballots to be counted by Verity’s patented optical scanning system.
“Hart pioneered digital ballot scanning, and Verity protects every step of the election process,” said Mathis. “Verity is a trustworthy, secure election solution backed by Hart’s signature service and reliability. We are proud to deliver what voters need and want.”
Mathis expects more jurisdictions to select Hart’s secure and efficient technology to replace older systems as counties prepare for 2020 elections.