BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - The company awarded a lucrative contract to replace Louisiana’s voting machines is challenging a state decision to scrap the deal and redo the bid process, saying no “reasonable grounds” were offered for voiding the contract award.
Dominion Voting Systems filed its appeal paperwork Wednesday.
“If this award cancellation is left to stand, the procurement and implementation of modern voting systems will be interminably delayed,” Trippe Hawthorne, a contract attorney representing Dominion, wrote in the vendor’s appeal letter.
A new bid and selection process, he wrote, “does not serve the public interest given current efforts at all levels of government to update and modernize election infrastructure.”
Louisiana’s chief procurement officer Paula Tregre scrapped the voting machine replacement contract award last week in response to a protest filed by losing bidder Election Systems and Software, known as ES&S. Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne, Tregre’s boss, will decide whether Dominion’s appeal is successful.
Tregre said the secretary of state’s office did not properly post the voting system standards required of a contractor. She said the request for vendor proposals said the secretary of state’s office would post certification standards on its website when the bid solicitation was issued. That didn’t happen, Tregre said, and later posted standards were withdrawn amid ES&S complaints that those standards were aimed to help Dominion.
Dominion said the bidders received sufficient guidance in the bid solicitation about the standards. The company said the text of what was required was clearly listed in the request for proposals, even if not on the website.
The bid evaluation committee knew what was required as it evaluated the proposed voting systems, and Tregre “exceeded her authority” by rescinding the contract award on this issue, Hawthorne wrote.
Tregre also determined that Dominion’s proposal involved equipment not properly certified by federal authorities. Hawthorne replied that “is a minor issue that is easily remedied and does not sufficiently justify the rejection of Dominion’s proposal.”
The secretary of state’s office solicited bids to replace 10,000 voting machines, swapping out equipment bought in 2005 with smaller devices, improved technology and a paper record of votes. Three companies bid for the contract. Dominion estimated the work would cost up to $95 million.
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican in office since May who is running in a November special election to remain in the job, defended the selection of Dominion. He called criticism of the contract award “baloney” as opponents slammed his handling of the voting machine replacement work.
After Tregre tossed the contract award, Ardoin blamed Gov. John Bel Edwards, accusing the Democratic governor of siding with ES&S because the company’s lobbyist is an Edwards supporter. Tregre’s office is within Edwards’ administration. The Edwards administration has called Ardoin’s allegations absurd and politically motivated.
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