In honor of “insider threat month” (I’m kidding) we have an interesting situation with the DemTech epollbooks in use by Prince William County.
There is a change in ownership from DemTech to Calvacere, Inc. In June, 2024 a Virginia SCC registration for Calvacere happened so that it could operate in Virginia. Also in June, an email was sent to a contact at the Virginia Department of Elections that Calvacere was waiting for insurance to finalize before submitting their information to the State Board of Elections for review. This information comes from FOIA requests.
We have not seen an approval of this new company during the State Bard of Elections meetings as of September 18, 2024. Early Voting starts September 20.
The shakeup at DemTech, previously owned by CIVIX, emerged to the counties in April 2024 when they were notified that the entire Virginia team was fired by CIVIX and no technical support would be provided to any county or city using their system. Since then, Calvacere came into the scene.
The history of DemTech and CIVIX is compelling. As highlighted by EPEC, in August of 2023, Civix, which describes itself as a leading public sector software and services firm, announced that it had sold its Critical Infrastructure division to Modaxo Inc. (“Modaxo”), “a global technology organization focused on moving the world’s people.” Modaxo appears to be headquartered in Canada.
The question is whether Calvacere has altered the ePollbook software or hardware in any way, because this would require a new certification by the State Board. A change in corporate structure could cause this as well.
Suppliers of election equipment are required to get certification by the State Board of Elections in order to be used. Further, the Virginia Electronic Pollbook Certification Standard document states that a vendor must,
Report to ELECT within 30 calendar days of knowledge of any changes to Corporate
Information, including:
a. Business Entity and Structure
b. Parent and Subsidiary companies
c. Capital or equity structure
d. Control; identity of any individual, entity, partnership, or organization owning a
controlling interest
e. Investment by any individual, entity, partnership, or organization in an amount
that exceeds 5% of the vendor’s net cash flow from the prior reporting year
f. Location of manufacturing facilities; including names of the third-party
vendor(s) employed to fabricate and/or assemble any component part of the
voting and/or tabulating system being submitted for certification, along with
the location of all of their facilities with manufacturing capability
g. Third-party vendors
h. Good Standing status
i. Credit rating – pg 4
Any modification to the hardware, firmware, or software of an existing system
which has previously been certified by the Virginia State Board of Elections in
accordance with these procedures will, in general, invalidate the certification unless
it can be determined by the State Board of Elections that the change does not affect
the accuracy, reliability, security, usability or accessibility of the system. – pg 7
Legal authority:
The electronic pollbook system and equipment must comply with the provisions
within the Code of Virginia and the Virginia Administrative Code relating to pollbooks,
voting, and voter registration.The electronic pollbook system or equipment must comply with the provisions in the
Code of Virginia relating to pollbooks (Chapter 6, Article 3 of Title 24.2).
The ePollbooks are not required by state law to be used, but all voting locations are required to have paper pollbooks.
An additional point of interest is the failure of Prince William County to conduct Acceptance Testing on the pollbooks that meets state requirements, as shown on page 20 of the Virginia Electronic Pollbook Certification Standard.
As required by the Code of Virginia §24.2-629 (E) and the procurement process, the local
jurisdiction with the assistance of state officials or consultants will conduct the Acceptance Test.
The local jurisdiction will examine that the purchased or leased system to be installed is identical
to the certified system and that the installed equipment and/or software are fully functional and
compliant with the administrative and statutory requirements of the jurisdiction. The state
requires localities to perform hash testing of applications software, as well as, send a letter to
ELECT, as required by the procurement process, to confirm that the versions of all software and
model(s) of equipment received are identical to the certified system.
All the election office produced was a checklist, but no assessment of functioning or has testing of software. Prince William spent over $300,000 on their ePollbooks. This brand of ePollbook is used widely across the Commonwealth. They have the registered voter list uploaded and show the election officers details about the voter before issuing ballots.