2026_Elections_Tabulation_System_RFP_(Draft).docx

PIERCE COUNTY REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

TITLE: Elections Tabulation System

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RFP ISSUED BY:

Pierce County Procurement and Contract Services Attention: Procurement Specialist pcpurchasing@piercecountywa.gov 253-798-7456

Expected Term of Resulting Agreement The initial contract period is anticipated to be for four (4) years. The County has the option of renewing for an additional three (3), two-year successive terms after initial contract is executed.

Section 1: Summary, background & timelines

1.1 Summary

Provide Pierce County with an Elections Tabulation System.

1.2 Background

Pierce County is the second (2nd) largest county in the state with over 590,000 registered voters. As with all counties in the State of Washington, Pierce County conducts all elections by mail and typically holds four (4) elections per year.

Pierce County implemented the Clear Ballot system in 2016.

The system consists of five (5) Fujitsu scanners and eight (8) ELO touch screens used for early voting and at voting centers.

Pierce County opens one to three voting centers for each election. The County is looking for a small, mobile tablet solution to provide in-person and a solution that would meet or exceed all requirements for accessible voting.

1.3 Timelines/Schedule

THESE ARE REQUESTED DATES. FINALIZED DATES TO BE AGREED UPON ONCE FULL PCS/LEGAL/RISK REVIEW is complete

1.4 Project Description

This RFP will result in a contract with Pierce County. The goals and objectives of the new contract include:

A. Use cost effective scanners that can be supported by a wide range of vendors at a low cost of ownership.

B. Make the tabulation of votes speedier and maintain the efficiency of the ballot adjudication process (ability to scan and adjudicate simultaneously at full capacity with no lag) to provide more timely election results to the public.

C. Scan reliability through modern technologies that can read dirty and damaged ballots.

D. Reduce the number of ballots that need to be hand duplicated before being scanned by utilizing scanners that can scan all paper types and sizes.

E. Improve processes by being able to scan and adjudicate simultaneously without suffering system lag or downtime.

F. Maintain high quality standards for ballot design and production.

G. Maintain high audit capabilities, transparency and openness to public scrutiny through canned and ad-hoc reporting capabilities.

H. Increase voter outreach opportunities through modern accessible voting unit technologies that are easily portable, wireless, and can remotely connect to and interface with the Election Management and Tabulation Systems.

I. Maintain ability to recount ballots efficiently as described in RCW. Pierce County currently has two methods for recounts. Reviewing undervotes during a machine recount or recounting ballots cast by batch.

1.5 SUBMITTAL CHECKLIST

For proposals to be considered the following must be included in your submittal:

1. Name, local address, email address, and phone number of the firm making the proposal.

2. The names and number of years the firm has been in business under current or previous names or additional assumed business names.

3. The name and title of the person authorized to execute a contract on behalf of the firm.

4. Any additional services or procedures of benefit to the County not specifically required by this Request for Proposal, which the Contractor offers to provide.

5. Complete pricing for all services in the proposal.

6. References listing customers with contracts for similar services.

7. The caption, cause number, Court, Counsel, and general summary of any litigation pending or judgment rendered within the past three (3) years involving the proposer.

8. Acknowledgement (via the County's eProcurement Portal) of each addendum issued

9. By submitting a proposal, proposer agrees that all documents, reports, proposals, submittals, working papers, or other materials prepared by the Contractor pursuant to this proposal shall become the sole and exclusive property of the County, and the public domain, and not property of the Contractor. The Contractor shall not copyright, or cause to be copyrighted, any portion of said items submitted to the County because of this solicitation.

Only electronic submittal via the County's eProcurement Portal shall be accepted. No hard copies, emails or fax submittals are acceptable.

section 2: Scope of Work

2.1 Overview

This Scope of Work identifies required solutions, services and support, future requests and optional, value-added solutions and support:

A. Required Solutions, Services and Support: The items listed in subsection 2.2 describe the solutions and support the County requires as part of the Contractor’s statement of work.

B. Future Requests: The County reserves the right to request functions, features, and/or support in the future as it relates to the tabulation system as well as the accessible voting units; including but not limited to:

a. Functions/features as mandated by changes in law

b. Functions/features that may be identified as custom

c. Additional reports

d. Modifications to support agreements

2.2 Objective

The following sections describe the scope of work for this project. These solutions, services and support are required as part of the Contract and Contractor’s scope of work.

The contractor shall provide The County with a United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and Washington State Certified Tabulation System (including all hardware and software associated with ballot design, scan, adjudication, tabulation and results reporting).

2.2.1 Project Initiation and Planning Deliverables

The Contractor shall provide The County with the following deliverables. The deliverables will be written in laymen’s terms and be written in such a way that a person unfamiliar with such products or processes could understand and follow along.

A. Project Work Breakdown Structure, which includes at a minimum:

a. Tasks and durations

b. Start and finish dates

c. Resource assignments

d. Dependencies (internal and external to the project) B. Project Management Plan, which includes at a minimum:

a. Status reporting process (County prefers weekly)

b. Issue tracking and escalation process

c. Risk mitigation plan

d. Communication plan

e. Conflict resolution plan C. Architecture and Technical Specifications, which includes at a minimum:

a. System architecture diagrams

b. Recommended server configurations

c. Recommended database configurations

d. Recommended scanner configurations

e. Recommended network configurations

f. Recommended tabulation room configurations

g. Recommended scan/adjudication room configurations

h. Recommended table configurations

i. Recommended printer configurations D. Test Plan, which includes at a minimum:

a. Test cases. These shall be tracked back to requirements and shall be comprehensive to include all test cases proposed by The County and adequate tests for all requirements. They shall also include pass/fail criteria.

b. Changes, modifications and corrective action tracking system

c. Number of rounds of testing/bug fixes for each type of testing

d. Test methodology, including roles and responsibilities for both The Contractor and The County to execute tests and evaluate results E. Training Plan, which includes at a minimum:

a. County staff that require training (i.e.: role type)

b. Number of classes for each type of training, including technical training, system administrator training and end-user training (i.e.: beginning, advanced, etc.)

c. Length of classes

d. Resource needs for training classes (i.e.: projector, computers, etc.)

F. Promote from Test to Production Plan, which at a minimum includes:

a. Explanation of how the configuration changes—once approved in the test environment—get promoted from the test environment to production

b. Documentation of the steps required to promote approved changes in the test environment to production

c. Documentation of how the source of an issue will be identified

2.2.2 Functional Requirements

The proposed solution must have the following capabilities at no additional cost to The County:

A. Enable The County to achieve the goals defined in Section 1 B. Process voted ballots up to six (6) weeks before each Election Day and suppress election results until 8pm Pacific Standard Time (PST) on Election Night C. Process typical ballot volumes experienced by The County in a reasonable timeframe and enable the County to improve its current throughput. Examples of typical ballot volumes: in the 2024 Presidential Election, 443,447 ballots were cast in Pierce County.

D. Import election definition data from the State of Washington VoteWA System.

E. Export ballots for printing by 3rd party service providers F. Support ballot on demand printing in office and vote centers using PDFs G. Extract election results and format them for publishing to The County’s websites H. Support centralized tallying of paper ballots I. Extract data for publishing to the State of Washington’s reporting system J. Designed to guarantee the security and integrity of election data K. Enable The County to create and design ballots in-house L. Export ballot design files compatible with the Democracy Live (VoteWA online ballot tool

2.2.3 Technical Requirements

Overview of Technical Requirements:

The system must, by design, operate in a standalone state utilizing an isolated network infrastructure. Publishing results and accessing State of Washington resources will utilize County private networks for transport. The Contractor is responsible for providing security infrastructure to isolate and protect the tabulation systems from The County’s wide area networks or other connected private networks. The Contractor shall be responsible for supporting both the hardware and software components of the system on an ongoing basis. As such, we do not have specific technical requirements other than any technical requirements required for certification by the State of Washington and those found in attachments to this RFP. The County prefers a system that is architected, from both a software and hardware standpoint, to be flexible enough to:

A. Accommodate future changes in functional requirements B. Leverage new hardware technologies as upgrades become available C. Accommodate future operating system upgrades D. Enable the vendor to deliver software patches and upgrades in a timely manner E. Provide upgrades required or necessitated by changes in state law In addition, The Contractor must respond to all questions in Attachments B, C and D. See instructions in those attachments for details.

Other Technical Requirements:

A. Test and production environments. The Contractor shall provide both a test and production environment for the solution B. Technical documentation. During the planning phase of the project, Contractor shall provide The County with the technical documentation and activities identified below:

a. Promote from test to production plan – detailing steps necessary to promote tested and approved configuration changes from the test environment to production

b. Test plan and testing –

i. The Contractor shall work with The County to develop an overall test plan for installed applications and coordinate and conduct each test in a manner acceptable to The County. The test plan must be submitted to The County for review and acceptance 10 days prior to scheduled testing

ii. Testing should include, at a minimum: system/unit testing, functional testing, quality assurance testing, performance/load testing, backup-restore testing, interface testing, results reporting testing (web/online and state) and user acceptance testing. The Contractor will be responsible for execution of the test plan which shall include the test cases and County-performed testing activities proposed by The County

iii. The County will conduct a security/penetration test and may require participation by The Contractor when needed at no additional cost to The County

iv. After all of the components of the system have been completed to the satisfaction of The County, The County will conduct user acceptance testing. The County will report any defects to The Contractor immediately for correction

v. If any defects are found, The Contractor will provide a written plan to achieve acceptance or to make corrections or replacements that are acceptable to The County.

c. Training and documentation – The Contractor shall deliver training and training materials to system administrators and end-users. The Contractor shall develop a training plan that will be acceptable to The County to fully prepare the system administrators to support the system and the end users to use the system. The training will be held at a location to be determined by The County and will be ‘just in time’ training (meaning, training will occur immediately prior to implementation of the system at the specified location). The training plan and materials must be submitted electronically to The County for review and acceptance prior to training. To provide County agencies an in-depth understanding of how the system works, the training plan must include, at a minimum:

i. Set-up and configuration

ii. Security and role-based access settings

iii. Workflow development

iv. Interfaces and data exchanges

v. Documented best practices in the configuration and use of the system

vi. Instructions on how to configure the system’s individual and role-based security profiles, event business rules and batch workflows

vii. Troubleshooting guide

viii. Query and reports creation and configuration

ix. General system administration

x. End-user training, to include at a minimum:

1. Import/export of data

2. Ballot design

3. Ballot scan

4. Adjudication

5. Merging/tabulation of results

6. Reporting

7. Election certification

d. Technical support and documentation – The Contractor shall provide technical assistance and written documentation to the County’s IT staff on the system’s configuration and customization, testing and troubleshooting. The Contractor will also provide documentation on the system’s database, services and other items to the County for the implementation and support for future support and reports

2.2.4 Implementation Requirements

A. The County expects the solution to be fully implemented by 01/01/2027 B. The County expects a turn-key solution. Contractor will be responsible for procuring and installing all hardware components of the solution and for installing and configuring all software components of the solution C. The Contractor shall assign skilled and experienced staff to complete the deliverables described in this Statement of Work, including at a minimum: system design, hardware delivery, implementation, configuration and customization, testing, training, and go-live support. The County shall reserve the right to reject any of The Contractor’s employees or subcontractors whose qualifications do not meet the standards established by The County as necessary for the performance of services or whom The County identifies as being unacceptable D. Go-Live support

a. Upon The County’s request, The Contractor shall provide, at no additional cost to The County, at least two (2) support staff for the first election cycle using the new tabulation system and accessible voting units. These resources will be available to provide onsite election support. The County may require (upon request) Contractor resource(s) to be onsite to support subsequent elections E. Deliverables, solutions and service acceptance

a. Installed solutions and services shall meet the standard performance as proposed and mutually agreed to by The County and The Contractor. Solutions and services are accepted after running in production for one (1) Primary and one (1) General election without material defect in accordance with the Contract in The County’s fully implemented production environments and when The County’s staff have been trained in accordance with the requirements set forth in this RFP and any mutually agreed upon adjustments section 3: questionnaire See Attachments B, C and D for Management, Technical and Solution Requirements questionnaires.

Our standard questionnaire in OpenGov includes:

1. Proposer/Bidder Acknowledgement

2. Supplemental Attachment Confirmations

· I confirm I have reviewed the content of the following attachments included under this RFP; Sample E-Verify Form and Sample Agreement and acknowledge I understand and agree to these requirements should my organization receive a contract as a result of this proposal.

3. Organization Information

· Business IDs

i. Washington State Unified Business Identification (UBI), and the *Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) and Cage Code issued by SAM.gov.

ii. *An 'active' UEI number and cage code are required when the funding is federal and creates a subrecipient relationship between the contractor and the County.

· Ownership Type

· Organization Contacts

· Authorized Individual

4. Proposal Upload, Pricing Documents,

· Be sure to remove any password protections on your documents before uploading.

section 4: EVALUATION CRITERIA

4.1 Proposal Evaluation and Scoring (See Attachment E)

Matters relating to qualifications to meet the County's needs will receive highest priority in evaluation. Matters relating to the means of meeting those needs described in the proposal will be considered secondary. Actual prices may be used to select successful offerors, and pricing methods and flexibility offered by a proposer for use in negotiation of a resulting contract may be considered in evaluation. After a proposal is selected, the County expects to negotiate the details of work to be performed based upon the proposal and the County's needs and appropriate pricing of selected tasks. If negotiations fail for any reason, including price, the County may choose to negotiate with other vendors to obtain an appropriate contract for the services needed.

Firms will be evaluated on the following criteria (1-6 are pre-loaded in OpenGov and can be altered to your procurement need):

1. The ability of the firm to provide the proposed services based on the contemplated scope of work and volume of business.

2. The experience of the firm, length of time in business, and other matters relating to relevant experience.

3. Experience of the individuals who will be assigned to provide the proposed services.

4. Appropriateness and flexibility of pricing arrangements.

5. Customer references either submitted with the proposal or gathered by the County.

6. The firm's proposed approach to this work includes compliance with requirements, innovative offerings, services offered and other related matters.

7. Past performance when providing the requested services to the County. (Only applicable if discussed and approved with PCS, otherwise this is omitted)

8. Other information as appropriate.

section 5: RFP GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS Included in OpenGov Reserved Rights and Procedures:

1. Pierce County expressly reserves the following rights:

a. To waive any and/or all irregularities in the proposals submitted.

b. To reject any or all proposals or portions thereof.

c. To base awards with due regard to quality of services, experience, compliance with specifications, and other such factors as may be necessary in the circumstances.

d. To make the award to any vendor or combination of vendors whose proposal(s), in the opinion of the County, is in the best interest of the County.

The County will not reimburse proposers for any costs involved in the preparation and submission of responses to this RFP or in the preparation for and attendance at subsequent interviews.

4. Cooperative Purchasing The Washington State Interlocal Cooperation Act, Ch. 39.34 RCW, authorizes public agencies to cooperatively purchase goods and services if all parties agree. By responding to this RFP, Consultants agree that other public agencies may purchase goods and services under this solicitation or contract at their own cost and without Pierce County incurring any financial or legal liability for such purchases. Pierce County agrees to allow other public agencies to purchase goods and services under this solicitation or contract, provided that Pierce County is not held financially or legally liable for purchases and that any public agency purchasing under such solicitation or contract file a copy of this invitation and such contract in accordance with RCW 39.34.040.

5. Public Records and Proprietary Material Proposers should be aware that any records they submit to the County or that are used by the County even if the proposers possess the records may be public records under the Washington Public Records Act (RCW 42.56). The County must promptly disclose public records upon request unless a statute exempts them from disclosure. Proposers should also be aware that if even a portion of a record is exempt from disclosure, generally, the rest of the record must be disclosed. Exemptions are narrow and specific.

Proposers should clearly mark any record they believe is exempt from disclosure.

6. Title VI Compliance Pierce County, in accordance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 252, 42 U.S.C. 2000d to 2000d-4 and Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, Department of Transportation, subtitle A, Office of the Secretary, Part 21, nondiscrimination in federally assisted programs of the Department of Transportation issued pursuant to such Act, hereby notifies all bidders that it will affirmatively ensure that in any contract entered into pursuant to this advertisement, disadvantaged business enterprises as defined at 49 CFR Part 26 will be afforded full opportunity to submit bids in response to this invitation and will not be discriminated against on the grounds of race, color, national origin, or sex in consideration for an award.

7. E-Verify Pierce County requires contractors attest to participation in the E-Verify program. A sample E-Verify form will be attached to this solicitation and will be required to be completed by the contractor and returned with contract documents prior to the start of the contract term.

DEPARTMENT-PROVIDED ATTACHMENT(S)

Listed first in OpenGov, PCS standard attachments are listed second

- Attachment A – Pricing

- Attachment B – Management Questions

- Attachment C – Technical Questions

- Attachment D – Solution Requirements

- Attachment E – Evaluation, Scoring and Demonstration

- Attachment F – Acceptance Forms

- Exhibit 1 – Technical Specifications Form

- Exhibit 2 – Acceptance Forms

STANDARD PCS ATTACHMENTS (INCLUDED IN OPENGOV)

Attachment __: Sample services agreement (if applicable) image1.jpeg