Ballot Now is Hart Intercivic’s software for printing paper ballots on-demand and scanning in and resolving batches of voted paper ballots. The Ballot Now system is most often used for tabulating absentee ballots, though in some central count jurisdictions is is used to tabulate polling place ballots cast by voters in ballot boxes. Ballot Now, like other applications in the Hart EMS suite of software, runs on a Windows 2000 Professional machine. It works with a variety of third-party scanners, for example the Fujitsu M4099D and Kodak i830 pictured above.

Ballot Now can be run on a stand-alone machine or in a networked, client/server configuration. Users must configure network certificates to run Ballot Now in a networked configuration. If run in networked configuration, the eCM must be present on the Ballot Now server. If run in standalone configuration, the eCM must be present on the standalone Ballot Now machine.

After defining an election database in BOSS, Ballot Now initializes an election MBB and creates a Ballot Now election database (stored in a unique folder for that election, in the file “ballotNow.db”). Ballot Now’s central features are (1) to print sample, test, and election ballots, either for third-party printing or on demand; and (2) to scan paper ballots (using the “Ballot Now Image Processor”, or BNIP); and (3) resolve undervoted, overvoted, and/or write-in contests. Results from scanned and resolved ballots are written to an election MBB, and after processing is done, the Ballot Now user closes the MBB using a “close MBB” function in the software. Ballot Now produces several types of audit logs—the Election Database Audit Log; the Security Database Audit Log; the Filtered Election Database Audit Log; and the Filtered Security Database Audit Log.

Hart InterCivic Ballot Now usage in November 2024 (click on map for details)

References

California Top to Bottom (T2B) Review (2007)
California Secretary of State Hart Intercivic Source Code Review (2007)
California Secretary of State Hart Intercivic Penetration Test Report
UC Berkeley Hart Intercivic Documentation Review (2007)
Ohio Secretary of State Evaluation and Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards and Testing (EVEREST) Review (2007)
EVEREST Hart Intercivic Executive Summary (2007)
EVEREST Hart Intercivic Technical Manager Report (2007)
EVEREST Hart Intercivic Technical Details Report (2007)
SysTest Labs Technical Report (2007)