Voting Technology Procurement Investigation


Audit Date: September 25, 2019
Audit Categories
  • Investigation
Controller: Rebecca Rhynhart
Audit Tags
  • city commissioners,
  • voting machines

Executive Summary


In 2018, the Pennsylvania Department of State issued several directives to counties regarding the purchase of electronic voting machines and electronic voting machine examinations. These directives required that all new voting machines purchased to employ a voter-verifiable paper ballot or a voter-verifiable paper record of the votes cast by a voter, be certified by the United States Election Assistance Commission and the Pennsylvania Department of State prior to use in an election, and that these voter-verifiable systems must be selected by December 31, 2019.

As a result of these directives, Philadelphia’s City Commissioners, a three member, popularly-elected bipartisan board charged with administering elections and voter registration for the City of Philadelphia in accordance with federal and state voter registration and election laws, began a process to upgrade and modernize its Election System infrastructure.

Prior to the selection of a vendor, the City Controller’s Office began communicating concerns regarding the procurement process to the Chair of the City Commissioners, Lisa Deeley, specifically calling attention to the fast-tracked nature of the process, the lack of public input, and transparency issues. Shortly after the February 20 vote, and months before the execution of formal contracts with the selected vendors, ES&S and KNOWiNK, the Controller’s Office launched an investigation into the procurement process to fulfill its obligation to prevent improper disbursements and assure strict accountability for the funds that would ultimately be disbursed.

The investigation sought to address concerns regarding the lawfulness, transparency, and fairness of the Request for Proposals and selection process, especially considering the cost of the purchase ($29 million) and the significance of the issue at hand. Over the last seven months, the Controller’s Office conducted more than 20 interviews of individuals involved in the procurement and selection process, including City Commissioners Al Schmidt and Lisa Deeley and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. The investigation revealed several areas of concern.

ES&S ENGAGED WITH CITY COMMISSIONERS AS EARLY AS 2013

In July 2013, City Commissioner Al Schmidt visited ES&S’s headquarters – the only visit by a commissioner to any potential voting machine vendor. Commissioner Schmidt stated that he visited on his own accord and did not seek reimbursement, however he could not recall any details regarding the trip, including who he talked to, who he met with, or who arranged the trip. During 2013, ES&S did not report any lobbyists with the Board of Ethics, but emails obtained during the investigation suggest that a lobbyist for ES&S was lobbying then-City Commissioners during this time. Notably, Commissioner Schmidt received two campaign contributions from ES&S’s lobbying firm in April and October of 2013.

ES&S reported using a lobbying firm in January 2014, which coincides with the City Commissioners’ efforts to modernize the City’s election systems and resulted in a Request for Information for voting system modernizations being released in October 2014. In 2015, the City Commissioners requested $22 million in budget appropriations to modernize the election system. Emails obtained in the investigation suggest that the budget request was developed with support from ES&S. The appropriation was not funded in that budget cycle and progress on this effort came to a halt, however lobbying efforts by ES&S did not. Since January 2014, ES&S spent more than $425,000 (as of the most recent filing) in lobbying expenses related to the City of Philadelphia, including $27,856 related to Commissioner Schmidt, specifically.

ES&S FAILED TO DISCLOSE USE OF CONSULTANTS AND CONSULTANTS CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

As part of its response to the RFP, ES&S was required to fill out a mandatory disclosure form and disclose any campaign contributions the business or its affiliated entities/persons made, the name of any consultants used to help in obtaining the contract and any campaign contributions the consultants made. On its mandatory disclosure form, ES&S did not disclose its use of lobbyists, the lobbyists’ activities or the lobbyists’ campaign contributions in its bid to win the contract for the purchase of new voting machines. Specifically, ES&S did not disclose that its lobbying firms, Duane Morris and Triad Strategies, made campaign contributions in 2017 and 2018 to Commissioners Schmidt and Deeley, two of the commissioners who had the final say in awarding the voting machine contract. This information was filed with the Ethics Board, as required, but was not disclosed as part of its mandatory disclosure form in its RFP response. Additionally, ES&S detailed lobbying activities to the Ethics Board, including repeated “direct communication” with Commissioner Schmidt, and “Direct Communications” regarding elections as recently as the July-September 2018 reporting period. The investigation found that the information provided on the disclosure was not reviewed and verified by the City. It is worth noting that as a result of this investigation’s disclosure finding, ES&S agreed to a nearly $2.9 million penalty – the largest penalty in the City’s history.

CITY COMMISSIONERS POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST

As stated previously, Commissioner Schmidt was the recipient of direct communication by ES&S’s lobbyists repeatedly and both Commissioners Schmidt and Deeley received campaign contributions from ES&S’s lobbyists in the years prior to selecting them as a vendor for the new voting machines. Despite this, both Commissioners Schmidt and Deeley signed Confidentiality and Conflict of Interest forms for the voting technology procurement process, agreeing to not “take official action, including but not limited to participation in the proposal review and selection process, that impacts [his] financial interests” and that “if any such relationship exists with an applicant who submitted a response to this RFP, I must disclose the relationship and disqualify myself from reviewing and evaluating any proposals submitted in response to this RFP.”

PROCUREMENT PROCESS ISSUES

A number of concerns were outlined with the procurement process, including the rushed nature of the procurement process, selection committee members feeling pressured to select ES&S, lack of procedures to ensure the integrity of the procurement process, and the lack of overall transparency in the procurement process.

Overall, this report shows significant issues with the procurement process for the new voting system, including not following Best Value Guidelines.