Election Systems and Software, Inc.
(11208 John Galt Blvd. Omaha, NE 68137)
Election Systems & Software (ES&S) is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group, LLC, which is jointly held by the holding firm and the Omaha World-Herald Company, the publisher of Nebraska’s largest newspaper. As of 2007 it was the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the United States, claiming customers in 1,700 localities. As of 2007 it had approximately 350 employees; 2005 revenues were $117 million.
Election Systems & Software was founded in 1979 as American Information Systems Inc. (AIS), it merged with Business Records Corp. the following year and changed its name to ES&S. It was one of the top four providers of voting equipment used in the November 2004 election; the other three were Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions), Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic.
History
Senator Chuck Hagel was an investor in the McCarthy Group Inc. and served as chairman of its AIS subsidiary from the early ‘90s until March 1995. AIS was responsible for counting 85% of the votes in his home state of Nebraska during the 1996 and 2002 elections. He did not disclose his position in the company in his mandated disclosures, until its name-change to Election Systems & Software (ES&S) in 1997.
2006 elections
After the November 2006 elections, Indiana launched an inquiry into poor service by the company, settling when ESS agreed to pay $750,000. West Virginia filed a formal complaint against the company with federal officials. Arkansas put together a panel to investigate. The company denied any major trouble with its machines, attributing problems to errors made by poll workers.
Withdrawal of InkaVote
On 3 August 2007, California Secretary of state Debra Bowen withdrew approval of the ES&S InkaVote Plus optical scan voting system after a “top-to-bottom review” of the voting machines certified for use in California in March 2007.
Reported problems during the 2008 election
Early voters in the 2008 Presidential election reported instances of malfunctioning machines. People complained that they voted for one candidate, only to have their selection switch to another. The clerk of Oakland County, Michigan reported inconsistent results with some machines during testing in October.
Acquisition of Premier Election Solutions
ES&S acquired Premier Election Solutions on 3 September 2009. The US Department of Justice and 14 individual states have launched investigations into the acquisitions on antitrust grounds. The company then sold it to Dominion Voting Systems.
Dominion Voting Systems, Inc
221 Hopkins Avenue
Jamestown, New York 14701
Dominion Voting Systems is a privately-owned Denver-based company that sells electronic voting machines.
In August 2010, Dominion reported that it has contracts to provide electronic voting systems to 600 jurisdictions in some 22 states of the United States, and has deployed 80,000 Dominion ImageCast Precinct Optical Scan Tabulators around the world.
Dominion was founded in 2002 in Toronto, Canada, by John Poulos and James Hoover.
In May 2010, Dominion acquired Premier Election Solutions (PES) from Election Systems & Software (ES&S). (ES&S had just acquired PES from Diebold and was required to sell off PES by the United States Department of Justice for anti-trust concerns.)
In June 2010, Dominion acquired Sequoia Voting Systems. The two acquisitions expanded Dominion significantly. With the acquisitions the company moved its headquarters to Denver.
Poulos, President and CEO of Dominion, has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and an MBA from INSEAD, in Fontainebleau, France. Hoover (Vice President) has an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta.
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