This year’s elections posed unprecedented challenges, as states postponed primaries and shifted their voting methods on short notice. With the general election came more than 34 million early in-person votes, almost 60 million mail-in votes, and record voter turnout across the country — all in the middle of a global pandemic.

Amid the chaos and uncertainty, poll workers and other election officials across the country required flexible, secure, and easy-to-use tools. Election technology company Clear Ballot rose to the challenge. Established in 2009, Clear Ballot focuses on improving the democratic process through transparency and innovation in elections.

“Elections are one of those industries where appearing in the paper isn’t always a good thing,” Clear Ballot’s Vice President of Engineering Will Crumbley remarked.

Crumbley and Software Engineer Co-op Kira Traynor spoke on Oct. 29 as part of Khoury’s Tech for Impact initiative, which features technology work that does social good on an individual or company level. Khoury Assistant Co-op Coordinator and Employer Engagement Specialist Brianne McDonough moderated the Zoom Q&A with Crumbley and Traynor, who is a fourth-year Khoury student.

Clear Ballot’s devices and software, Crumbley explained, are designed to help counties conduct elections as smoothly and as easily as possible. The goal is to cover every step of the voting process, and to do so securely. This work/process begins before a single vote is cast.

Election officials can create and edit ballots with ClearDesign, a browser-based user interface with straightforward, intuitive text editing and drag-and-drop tools. Users can also view a report containing the complete ballot text, as well as translations into several languages.

Once election day arrives, citizens voting in-person mark a paper ballot, and then scan it into ClearCast, a Clear Ballot product that scans each ballot and tabulates votes. Americans with disabilities can also vote in person using a ballot-marking system called ClearAccess. These voters record their choices on off-the-shelf machines with Clear Ballot software and then print a ballot to scan into ClearCast, so that their votes are counted the same way as everyone else’s votes. The ClearAccess technology is easy to flip through and helps voters double-check their picks at the end, an especially helpful feature that makes voting more accessible for people with disabilities, including ones who are blind, who might otherwise need assistance or not vote at all.

ClearCast then scans and counts each ballot, tabulating ballots for state reporting, and reconciling and electronically labeling ballots to streamline tracking. Their compatibility with ballots produced by other major voting systems offers flexibility within a county’s existing infrastructure.

A national company that played a vital role behind the scenes during one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history, Clear Ballot provides the main voting systems for counties in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New York. Other Clear Ballot products — ClearCount and ClearAudit — offer independent analysis and audits in states like Florida, Vermont, and Maryland.

It was into this company, and this election, that Traynor stepped. A computer science major with a concentration in artificial intelligence, she spent the second half of 2019 as an automation co-op at MFS Investment Management, a global firm which manages more than half a trillion dollars in assets.

While searching for her second co-op, Traynor made a point of seeking positions where her work would have tangible impact. When she found Clear Ballot, she examined the company’s mission statement, brought up her interest in the election industry during interviews, and asked each interviewer why they worked there. Their answers confirmed to her that she’d found the right company to achieve her goals.

“It feels like I’m helping to make a difference,” she told the Zoom audience at Khoury College’s Oct. 29 event. “I feel like ‘tech for impact’ is a very fitting title.”

Partly because of the pandemic-related uptick in business, Traynor has worked on two different teams in the last four months. Right now, she’s on the auditing team, where she works on software that parses ballots and interacts with clients to meet their specific needs. She also worked with the development team and learned Python and Docker.

“I was nervous to start remote and onboard remote,” she recalls. “But it was actually really smooth and I think it’s because I got to talk to all those people.” She recommends that other co-ops in a similar position reach out to their new co-workers on the company’s messaging platform of choice to learn about their backgrounds and to make the transition smoother.

Crumbley, whose “meandering path” has taken his career through many intersections of politics and technology, echoed the need for an exploratory spirit.

“If there’s a technology in a field you’re interested in, seek volunteer opportunities to work with that technology,” he said.