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ORIGIN AND PROLIFERATION OF TOTALVOTE
TotalVote was originally created in 2007 as an election night reporting system called the Central Election Reporting System (CERS). South Dakota Secretary of State, Chris Nelson, commissioned BPro to create CERS as part of a case study funded with a grant from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
CERS replaced South Dakota’s existing manual election night reporting system with a centralized one controlled by the SOS. Nelson presented CERS to the National Association of Election Officials at their 2009 annual meeting. After this, CERS was renamed TotalVote and BPro assumed ownership of the software paid for with public funds– a gift that ended up being extremely lucrative for BPro.
In another questionable move, Nelson gave away the publicly funded TotalVote software in 2009 to North Dakota, but Bpro was given a $100,000 sole source contract to continue development and support of TotalVote. Then later in 2010, BPro entered another sole-source contract to administer TotalVote in Nebraska.
In 2011, Chris Nelson moved on to the Public Utilities Commission and was replaced by Jason Gant as Secretary of State. During his campaign, Jason Gant accepted a $7,500 donation from BPro and a $10,000 donation from South Dakota’s voting machine provider, ES&S of Omaha, Nebraska.
After his election, Gant hosted a pheasant hunt with other Secretaries of State from across the country, with Brandon Campea, now owner of Bpro, also in attendance. Acceptance of questionable campaign donations from state vendors and expensive social outings with their owners was the first of many corrupt dealings that included missing funds, missing electronic records, lawsuits, and conflicts of interest.
Gant continued exporting TotalVote to as many states as possible behind the scenes. For example, in 2014, Hawaii signed a sole-source contract with Bpro for the voter roll maintenance and election night reporting system. In May of 2015, New Mexico entered a $200,000 sole-source contract with BPro. The contract states that the TotalVote software was a “gift” from Secretary of State Jason Gant, but Gant had left office before this contract was made and there is no indication by what authority he was still giving away public property.
BPro also secured contracts with other states such as Montana, Iowa, Arizona, Washington ($10 million), Pennsylvania ($10 million), Oregon ($7 million) and more. Thanks to Nelson and Gant’s generosity in giving away state-funded software, BPro raked in the contracts which were not even put out for bid, as BPro claimed they were the only company who could service TotalVote.