2006 Minnesota Statutes

206.805 STATE VOTING SYSTEMS CONTRACTS.
    Subdivision 1. Contracts required. (a) The secretary of state, with the assistance of the
commissioner of administration, shall establish one or more state voting systems contracts. The
contracts should, if practical, include provisions for maintenance of the equipment purchased. The
voting systems contracts must address precinct-based optical scan voting equipment, and ballot
marking equipment for persons with disabilities and other voters. The contracts must give the
state a perpetual license to use and modify the software. The contracts must include provisions to
escrow the software source code, as provided in subdivision 2. Bids for voting systems and related
election services must be solicited from each vendor selling or leasing voting systems that have
been certified for use by the secretary of state. The contracts must be renewed from time to time.
(b) The secretary of state shall appoint an advisory committee, including representatives of
the state chief information officer, county auditors, municipal clerks who have had operational
experience with the use of electronic voting systems, and members of the disabilities community
to advise the secretary of state in reviewing and evaluating the merits of proposals submitted from
voting equipment vendors for the state contracts.
(c) Counties and municipalities may purchase or lease voting systems and obtain related
election services from the state contracts. All counties and municipalities are members of the
cooperative purchasing venture of the Department of Administration for the purpose of this
section. For the purpose of township elections, counties must aggregate orders under contracts
negotiated under this section for products and services and may apportion the costs of those
products and services proportionally among the townships receiving the products and services.
The county is not liable for the timely or accurate delivery of those products or services.
    Subd. 2. Escrow of source code. The contracts must require the voting system vendor to
provide a copy of the source code for the voting system to an independent third-party evaluator
selected by the vendor, the secretary of state, and the chairs of the major political parties. The
evaluator must examine the source code and certify to the secretary of state that the voting
system will record and count votes as represented by the vendor. Source code that is trade secret
information must be treated as nonpublic information, in accordance with section 13.37. Each
major political party may designate an agent to examine the source code to verify that the voting
system will record and count votes as represented by the vendor; the agent must not disclose the
source code to anyone else.
History: 2005 c 162 s 19; 2006 c 242 s 31