At the weekly Joint Select Committee on Election Security hearing last Thursday, ES&S Vice President of Security and Chief Information Officer Christopher Woloshin testified that he could not think of any reason why county and state officials were not collecting and making available vital election records known as Cast Vote Records (CVR) generated by the company’s vote tabulation software used in Montana elections.

Cast Vote Records, or CVRs, are a best practice protocol and data standard laid out by the Federal National Institute of Standards and Technology and a feature of ES&S election software. CVRs record an image of each ballot scanned by tabulators with a read out of what the machine determined as the voter’s intent.

Terri Barney of Helena asked the election software head of security if there was any reason to turn off the CVR on ES&S machines.

“I can’t think of one,” Woloshin testified. “It varies state by state. I am not familiar with a reason why a CVR would not be generated. A large majority of our customers do use that functionality as one more record to be audited for the election.”

Another citizen asked Woloshin if any voters identifying information was collected by the machines, a common reason given by state and county officials for not making available CVR data or ballots to public requests.

“Can any elector information be obtained from the ES&S tabulators?” Rick Moser of Carbon County asked.

“Absolutely not,” Woloshin testified. “There is no collection of any voters identifying information. That’s a requirement that the ballots be anonymous. Any ballot cannot be traced to any voter. No.”

“So the CVR would have no elector information on that record?” Moser pressed.

“That’s correct, sir,” Woloshin responded.

Several public commenters mentioned that Amy Reeves, election administrator in Lewis and Clark County, told constituents that she would not enable the CVR feature on the ES&S tabulation machines because the process would slow down the machine.

Committee member Rep. Bob Phalen (HD-36) asked Woloshin if recording the CVR data slowed down the machine operation.

“We have multiple customers in multiple states that do both Cast Vote Record and ballot images. I am not aware of a significant performance issue that slows down the counting,” Woloshin said.

Senator Theresa Manzella (SD-44) asked Woloshin about what data elections officials should be recording to provide more complete auditing of Montana elections.

“Based on best practices, what elements do we need to maintain to have an auditable trail,” Manzella asked.

“The audit logs that the machines generated would be a very good artifact to include in a post-election audit,” Woloshin testified. “The state needs to decide if the Cast Vote Record is a record of the election and should be mandated for use in all counties. Our machines are designed to produce Cast Vote Records. Whether or not they are extracted or reported on, that is a call by the state.”

Woloshin suggested the state should consider mandating the creation and reporting of the cast vote records through legislation and that the state should be publishing this post-election audit data, something the state is not currently doing.

“Maybe their needs to be legislation in place to mandate the generation and reporting of those cast vote records so that they can be compared to the ballot images and actual paper ballots to make sure the machine performed as designed,” Woloshin testified. “Whatever post election audit… it needs to be mandated and published to the counties.”

In April of last year, the Secretary of State’s Elections & Voter Services Manager, Stuart Fuller, notified election administrators not to enable the Cast Vote Record feature without explanation after citizens requested the data from elections administrators including in Ravalli County. Regina Plettenberg and other state election administrators asked for guidance from the state.

“We have been asked by multiple counties for guidance on the ES&S configuration for saving ballot images,” Fuller said in an email. “Our guidance is to maintain the historical practice for this type of configuration that your county has already adopted and implemented.”

Western Montana News contacted Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office to find out why the state recommended against the collection of the CVR election record that ES&S security recommended be collected for more complete post-election audits of the machines. The secretary’s office has not responded.

In a followup question to ES&S’s Woloshin, Manzella asked if the company’s software complied with a Montana law which stipulates that a voting system allow auditors to access and monitor any software program while it is running on the system to determine whether the software is running properly.

“It seems to me that the contracts that the county signs and the Secretary of State signs with ES&S prohibits that from happening. Is that correct?” Manzella asked.

“I don’t think so. I don’t have the contract language right in front of me,” Woloshin stated. “We have many customers who monitor the machines while they’re in operation. The machines won’t operate if you crack them open and look at the software and internal workings during election day while you’re counting ballots. But before an election, the machine can be monitored. The audit logs extracted and checked. As well as post-election when you’re comparing the performance of the machine to the number of paper ballots counted or ballot marketing device ballots counted. We do allow for pre and post election monitoring and auditing of the machine performance.”

Manzella also requested that ES&S make available the machine software code in an escrow holding for state security officials to review. ES&S allows for the auditing of their software code in other states and said that ES&S would make available the software code to state officials for review through the same escrow process.

Readers can watch the entire hearing and listen in on other questions posed by public comment and legislators by visiting the legislative archive of the hearing here.

The legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Election Security meets every Thursday starting at 4:30PM during the 2023 legislative session.