The Role of Election Vendors in Election Administration

Abstract

Vendors in the election space that include voter registration, election management systems, pollbooks, electronic pollbooks, ballot printing, ballot mail handling and scanning, voting devices, tabulation software, and election night reporting (ENR) are partners with America’s election administrators, helping to keep the nation’s elections running smoothly, securely, and accurately. These vendors are solution providers who are deeply committed to the continued improvement of the running of our nation’s elections, seeking to make them more user-friendly, more efficient, more secure, and more transparent. Election companies invest heavily in their solutions in order to bring their innovations to a relatively small market in a timeframe that meets the needs of voters and election administrators while running the gamut of federal and state regulations and certifications necessary in order to get systems through research, development, and testing and then into the field for use in live elections. Election solution providers are constantly looking for new challenges in elections that they can approach with better solutions than those that currently exist.