alarm:clock

ASP - Friday, September 23, 2005

Election Services Corporation- Profile

HQ: Garden City, NY

Founded: 2003

Management: Mel Schrieberg is CEO and Chairman. He previously founded election.com, which looks like it was snapped up by Accenture. Frank Fatone is co-founder and COO. He helped start election.com as well.

Investors: In September, the company announced a $5 million round of venture capital from Trillium Group and North Atlantic Capital.

Business Model: Election Services Corporation offers election management services to the private sector: labor unions, professional and membership associations, credit unions, residential organizations, alumni groups, and other private organizations that need a way to poll investors or members. The company's products include voter registration and database management, polling site and remote electronic voting, advanced security solutions, accurate tabulations, demographic reporting and related membership services. The Election Services team has managed more than 6,500 elections, involving more than 30 million voters in the last four years alone.

Competitors: Accenture eDemocracy Services, TrueBallot, eBallot, VoteHere

Dirt: In the past, we’ve whined about how deplorable this country’s current election management services are for public elections and we’ve wondered if a private company would be willing to step up and try to streamline the market. Last November, after a bad voting experience in an analog voting booth, we acknowledged that there's probably not much money to be made in creating new voting technologies, but we pleaded for wildly rich, bored geeks to give it a try. ESC looks to be squarely focused on the private sector for now, but perhaps they’ll give public elections a try. After all, ESC’s founder also started election.com, which had the distinction of conducting the world's first legally binding publicly-held internet election.

From the pet peeve department: ESC's website looks like crap. If you're trying to position yourself as a software/services company, then get with the program. You can hire a kid off Craig's List and get that site looking all shiny and new for next to nothing.