# Hart InterCivic **Hart InterCivic** is an Austin, Texas voting-systems maker and the third of the three companies that supply most American election equipment, alongside [[Election Systems & Software]] and [[Dominion Voting Systems]]. Its product line is called **Verity**. Julie Mathis has been chief executive since January 2020 and was still in the job as of April 2026. ## Origins and ownership Hart's election business goes back to **1912**, when the family printing company began printing ballots for Texas counties. The election unit was spun out of Hart Graphics in 1989, became fully separate in 1999 and took the Hart InterCivic name in 2000. In July 2011 the private-equity firm **H.I.G. Capital** made a strategic investment in the company alongside its existing owners. That was an investment, not an outright purchase. ## The first VVSG 2.0 system Hart's main place in the federal story is that it got there first. The [[Election Assistance Commission]] certified **Verity Vanguard 1.0** as the first voting system to meet [[Voluntary Voting System Guidelines]] 2.0. The certificate is dated **July 7, 2025** and the EAC announced it on July 10. That came late. VVSG 2.0 was adopted on February 10, 2021, and after November 15, 2023 it was the only version the EAC accepted for new submissions. For about twenty months nothing could be newly certified to the only standard on offer. The EAC's VVSG 2.0 list has since grown to **four certificates covering three product lines**: | Date | System | Note | |---|---|---| | July 7, 2025 | Hart Verity Vanguard 1.0 | The first | | Nov 26, 2025 | [[Smartmatic]] VSR1 2.1 | | | June 26, 2026 | Hart Verity Vanguard 1.1 | A modification of 1.0 | | Sept 15, 2026 | VotingWorks VxSuite 4.0 | The first open-source system to win federal certification; tested by [[SLI Compliance]] | The vault earlier said "two" systems. That was true only until June 2026. Texas, Hart's home market, certified Vanguard 1.0 on **March 31, 2026**. Hart said it was the sixth state to do so. ## Controversy In the 2018 Texas midterms, voters in dozens of counties complained that Hart's older eSlate machines "flipped" their straight-ticket selections. The Texas Secretary of State blamed user error, from pressing buttons before the page had loaded, and issued an advisory to counties. The episode came before 2020, but it fed the same distrust of machines that the [[Election Conspiracy Theories]] later fixed on [[Dominion Voting Systems]]. ## Why the standard is now frozen On July 9, 2026, Trump fired EAC commissioners Thomas Hicks and Ben Hovland, and Christy McCormick resigned. Donald Palmer had already left in April 2026 for the [[Heritage Foundation]]. That left the commission with **no commissioners**. EAC staff can still certify systems, which is how VxSuite was certified in September. But nobody can adopt a successor to VVSG 2.0 or change the testing laboratories (see [[Pro V&V]]). Whatever share of the market moves to VVSG 2.0 does so against a standard no one can currently revise. ## See Also - [[How a Voting System Is Certified and Decertified]] · [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] - [[Voluntary Voting System Guidelines]] · [[Election Assistance Commission]] - [[Election Systems & Software]] · [[Dominion Voting Systems]] · [[Smartmatic]] - [[Pro V&V]] · [[SLI Compliance]]