Election tech startups find common ground

Business First of Columbus - by Jeff Bell Business First

Two startup companies in Columbus are working together to see if they can make digital pen-and-paper technology a common tool in Ohio petition drives and elections.

Ohio Petition Co. will invest $50,000 in digital pen hardware, software and other equipment while drawing on PenVote's expertise to deploy the technology on voter-registration forms and petitions in voter signature campaigns, said Ian James, an Ohio Petition principal.

That investment will help PenVote get the certification it needs from Anoto Group AB, a Swedish company that controls the technology for the digital pen-and-paper system, said PenVote co-founder Chris Wilson.

"For us, the funding issue has been the biggest challenge," said Wilson, a former Franklin County elections official who launched PenVote last year with business associate Steve Hilsman.

The first big test of the technology could come as early as May, James said, when the Ohioans for Healthy Families Coalition could begin collecting signatures to place a paid-sick-leave proposal on the statewide ballot in November.

James said he is optimistic his company will land a contract to help collect the 120,683 valid signatures needed to put the issue on the ballot. He worked last year with sick-leave mandate proponents on their statewide drive.

PenVote has helped develop a digital pen-and-paper voter registration form that would be used in the sick-leave signature drive and other petition projects to be taken on by Ohio Petition Co. It fits well with a process the company has developed to provide a line-by-line review of all signatures within 72 hours.

Winning over officials

In a nutshell, digital paper contains thousands of tiny dots that are read by a digital pen. The pen writes in ink and contains a small sensor that records the locations of the pen strokes on the paper. The pen is placed into a cradle, and the data on it is downloaded to a computer for review.

James and Wilson connected shortly after James, Julie Heffelfinger, Chris Kvinta and Stephen Letourneau launched Ohio Petition Co. in January.

Digital pen technology also has potential beyond the elections field, James said. For example, it could it be used to record responses to consumer surveys or register participants at large events. That's fine with Wilson, but he said his focus will remain on election applications.

Like other states, Ohio is moving back to paper ballots because of studies that challenge the security of electronic voting systems. Wilson said PenVote's digital pen-and-paper technology would provide a reliable, cost-effective way to record votes on paper ballots, but he has yet to win over the Ohio Secretary of State's office, which oversees elections in the state.

"We know it will be a long-term battle," Wilson said. "There are pockets of interest around, but the dam hasn't opened for us yet."

Until it does, PenVote will concentrate on the development of voter registration and petition forms as well as a digital pen-and-paper poll book it tested last November in Franklin County. In a field trial at a precinct in New Albany during the November general election, PenVote took existing paper poll books - the ones signed by voters upon arriving at their polling place - and printed them on dot-enabling digital paper. Voters signed the books with a digital pen, which was docked at the end of the voting day. At that point, the digital pen equipment instantly applied the poll-book information to Franklin County's voter registration database.

Wilson said the digital pen technology eliminated the time-consuming and error-prone manual process in which electronic wands read and scan in the data. In a letter to Wilson after the election, Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder said the field test was "exceptionally successful."

614-220-5456 | jabell@bizjournals.com