Hart InterCivic Inc.

Hart InterCivic's Web site nods at the continuing controversy over e-voting technology, promising to "guarantee the best election you've never heard of." (Presumably, that was written before the name-truncation bugs spotted in Virginia and Texas late in the election cycle.) Hart's eSlate machines, unlike most of the competition's units, function essentially as dumb terminals. The user interface is distinguished by the Select Wheel positioning device, which eliminates the use of touch screens. eSlates are available in DRE and DRE/VVPATmodels.

As of October, various machines from Austin-based Hart InterCivic were certified for use in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Massachusetts will evaluate several Hart machines in its November elections. Hart is also involved with voter-registration database systems in conjunction with IBM.

Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.

By late October, Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems was once again fending off rumors that the company has connections to the Venezuelan government. According to information on the company's Web site, Sequoia's parent company, Smartmatic Corp., is privately owned, with a controlling interest held by founder and CEO Antonio Mugica. Mugica holds dual Spanish and Venezuelan citizenship. Sequoia offers AVC Edge and AVC Advantage DRE units, an AVC Edge DRE/VVPAT unit, and sells a Sequoia-branded Optech Insight optical scanner. (Election Systems & Software also offers an Optech line for reasons explained in the ES&S section.) Also in October, Sequoia figured at the center of tests on Alameda County, Calif., e-voting machines; results () were generally positive compared with those for a contemporary Diebold unit, though the need for stronger network security and better handling procedures was emphasized.