Voter Registration System

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is requesting proposals for design, implementation, and maintenance of a Voter Registration and Election Database Management System (VRM System) under RFP #7080, with proposals due July 13, 2026 at 4:00 PM Eastern Time and the inquiry period deadline June 23, 2026. Respondents must be Ohio-certified contractors; no set-aside or preference program is specified.

The system must serve approximately 862,843 registered voters across 897 precincts and 271 voting locations in Cuyahoga County, with capacity to handle upwards of 2,000,000 voter records. The VRM System comprises six integrated modules—Voter Registration, Election Setup and Candidate/Petition, Absentee Voting, Poll Worker, Logistics (Polling Locations), and Information Services—and must integrate seamlessly with the Statewide Voter Registration Database, CCBOE website, electronic pollbooks (Tenex), Runbeck Agilis, Ricoh Scanners, Clear Ballot's ClearVote, and Democracy Live. The public-facing website component must comply with WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards, deliver 99.9% uptime during election cycles with capacity to handle 500% traffic surges, and include voter lookup, Vote-by-Mail tracking, sample ballot, and candidate data export widgets. Data must be encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit. Backup and disaster recovery must meet Ohio Secretary of State Directive 2026-20, with daily incremental and weekly full backups retained for three weeks, recovery time objectives under four hours, and annual full-scale restoration testing.

Key milestones are data conversion start by December 1, 2026; parallel testing beginning February 1, 2027; system go-live June 1, 2027; and Final System Acceptance by December 31, 2027. A 24/7/365 Help Desk with toll-free support is required, with Key Performance Indicators including maximum 2-second load and save times, 99.95% system availability, zero privacy breaches, and tiered incident response (8 hours for Severity 1, 24 hours for Severity 2, 5 business days for Severity 3). Non-compliance triggers payment deductions of 2.5% to 10% or greater based on accumulated non-compliance points. Liquidated damages of $500 per day apply for delays beyond Final Acceptance.

The contract includes a five-year maintenance and support term commencing January 1, 2028, with the CCBOE holding sole and exclusive options to renew for unlimited one-year periods upon 60 days' notice. The vendor must maintain an enterprise perpetual license for unlimited users, arrange source code escrow with all fees included in support pricing, and provide transition services within 180 calendar days upon contract expiration or termination. Insurance requirements include comprehensive general liability of $2 million, professional liability of $3 million, cyber insurance of $3 million, and workers' compensation coverage.

Evaluation criteria are system functionality (40% weighting), information technology and systems compatibility (30%), project plan (20%), and cost proposal (10%). Cost proposals must itemize implementation costs through system acceptance, post-acceptance annual maintenance and support costs for years 1–5, third-party vendor costs, optional enhancements, and first renewal annual pricing using Exhibit C. Demonstrations are tentatively scheduled for the week of July 27, 2026. Responses must be submitted through the Cuyahoga County Supplier Portal.