Everyone Counts

When these headlines brought the world’s largest democracy to its knees, Lori Steele-Contorer ’86 was at the top of her game as a global expert on technology investment as vice president at Solomon Smith Barney. She was focused on her clients and the responsibility of managing $300 million in assets, but the problem with the 2000 elections continued to trouble her.

“I found myself wondering why, with all of the extraordinary innovations in technology occurring in so many industries, the United States couldn’t do something as simple–and important–as count votes accurately and reliably,” Steele-Contorer said.

From her investment career, she knew there were any number of technology solutions that could make voting secure, accessible and irrefutable while also providing secure and reliable data authentication and transmission of ballots.

At the same time, she was asking herself what her mark would be on the world — what had she done that would make a difference?

While she was pondering these two big questions, former eBay president Jeffrey Skoll put out a call for ideas that would change the world for inclusion in the inaugural World Forum of Social Entrepreneurship.

“This seemed like the sign I needed to do something with all of the ideas that were swirling in my head,” said Steele-Contorer.

When her submission was accepted, she was overjoyed and dropped everything in her life to pursue her dream of increasing access to voting around the world.

“What I didn’t know at the time was that everyone was accepted that first year,” she said. “I thought my idea must be really special and worthwhile, so I jumped in. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t know what I didn’t know, including how incredibly difficult this would become. Had I known, I would most likely have missed the most extraordinary experience of my life.”

So in 2004, Steele-Contorer left her 17-year career to launch Everyone Counts. Starting with just a few employees working in her dining room, she went after the United States’ sprawling hardware-based voting industry.

In the United States, each state or county is able to purchase any certified voting system that it chooses and administer voting per state regulations. However, the troubling flaw is that with antiquated certification standards, voting systems cannot be upgraded, only replaced. This is a boon for voting hardware manufacturers, but a loss to voters who must continue to use extremely outdated systems that municipalities cannot afford to replace. The last incremental changes to voting certification standards were enacted in 2003, which is light years ago in terms of technology evolution.

In contrast, Everyone Counts provides software-as-a service-based voting systems. Using standard off-the-shelf, accessible and replaceable devices such as iPads or other tablets, Everyone Counts provides perpetually state-of-art software that eliminates the need for antiquated purpose-built voting machines and costly, error-prone, wasteful paper solutions. In addition to an emphasis on scalable and sustainable software solutions, Steele-Contorer and her team embrace a strong mission of social responsibility to ensure that everyone who is legally entitled to vote can do so privately, independently, and with complete confidence that their ballots are accurately counted.

“Lori’s solution is revolutionary,” said Tim Draper, founder of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, president of Draper University of Heroes, and an early investor in Everyone Counts. “By relying on consumer-based devices, she has modernized the election process and provided a way for voting to be more accessible for everyone – including absentee voters and voters with disabilities and even people who have never voted before – while increasing the security and transparency of elections.”

ying on consumer-based devices, she has modernized the election process and provided a way for voting to be more accessible for everyone – including absentee voters and voters with disabilities and even people who have never voted before – while increasing the security and transparency of elections.”

However, even the best ideas don’t immediately change the status quo, and there were legions of people telling Steele-Contorer that pursuing Everyone Counts was nothing but a castle in the sky.
“They insisted government wouldn’t change, that I didn’t have enough experience to run a company, and that I couldn’t raise enough money to make it work,” she said.

She poured all of her own assets into the company, raised more than $18 million in venture capital, and then headed to the only place to affect change on a national scale – Washington, D.C.
Again, she was blissfully unaware of the extreme challenges ahead of her.

“I was sure that a proven solution for improving the obvious challenges of security in, accuracy of, and access to voting would get everyone on board and affect change at the national level,” she said. “Instead, I found myself almost literally being told to not let the door hit me on the way out. Some people were polite, some were not, but none seem inclined to change. It was definitely disheartening.”

She returned to her company’s home base in California where she continued to build connections and refine the software with her team. To her surprise, a few months later a House of Representatives staff member showed her a bill being presented on the House floor that day: it was Steele’s proposal. That was the beginning of the 2009 Military Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, which was then passed, with 65 senators co-signing it. This bill requires all states to make absentee ballots available electronically for overseas and military voters.

“This victory was exhilarating,” said Steele-Contorer. “The very people who serve the United States with overseas military service, often paying a great personal price, were some of our country’s most disenfranchised voters. Providing them with accessible and reliable voting speaks to the very heart of my dream for Everyone Counts.”

“What she did was absolutely incredible,” said Nick Leibham, who spends a great deal of his time representing clients in Washington, D.C., as a partner with K&L Gates. “What most companies hire a lobbyist to manage, Lori accomplished on her own with drive, determination and a really phenomenal idea.”

This legislative success opened a thin wedge in the enormous elections industry. Since then, Everyone Counts has led successful election administration and voting projects throughout the country, including elections in South Dakota, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, West Virginia, Chicago, Alabama, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, multiple Florida counties and Honolulu. The company’s reach is felt around the globe as Everyone Counts’ customers have also included Canada, the United Kingdom, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Australia, serving voters located in more than 165 countries, including Antarctica.

As founder, chair and chief executive officer of Everyone Counts, Steele-Contorer is now widely viewed as the world leader in secure voting technology. She and her team testified three times before the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, a non-partisan group formed by Barack Obama after the United States bore witness to 2012 elections plagued by long lines and bitter voter registration disputes.

Testifying on Capitol Hill might seem a long way from her small-town Ohio upbringing, but Steele-Contorer says it’s a natural progression.

“A number of my colleagues and friends are from the Midwest. I think there is something about the heartland work ethic, humility and emphasis on education that forms a solid foundation for success. I received a great education at BGSU, and had a family that encouraged and supported me. I graduated equipped with the tools to make my dreams come true.”

Now, with dozens of employees and a recent facilities expansion, Lori continues to expand Everyone Counts’ reach across the globe. She has participated in the World Forum on e-Democracy, was a panelist at the United Nations International Telecommunications Union World 2003 Forum on Technology and Telecommunications, and was an invited member of the Centre of Excellence’s International Advisory Council. She has served as a panelist, adviser and participant in numerous international forums working to ensure transparent, secure, and accessible elections for governments throughout the world.

Everyone Counts also managed the transition from voting by mail to online voting for the iconic Academy Awards for three years, which resulted in the Oscars’ highest voter participation, and now
is also transitioning the Emmy Awards to online voting for the 2014 program.

In addition to changing the world through fair elections, Steele-Contorer commits time and expertise to community organizations, with 15 years as a director of the Greater San Diego Boys and Girls Clubs, as a founding partner with San Diego Social Venture Partners and through work with other San Diego organizations including Voices for Children, the Door of Hope, and Excellence and Justice in Education.

Her transformational work has been recognized with myriad awards that include being named in 2013 to Fortune Magazine’s 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs list, finalist for E&Y’s 2014 Entrepreneur of the Year in San Diego, recipient of San Diego Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business Award, and induction into the Bowling Green State University Dallas-Hamilton  Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame.

But Steele-Contorer is just getting started.

“This is a $31 billion industry, with no clear global leader and using antiquated technologies,” she said. “The time is ripe for disruptive change. And because elections are one of the most important mission-critical processes in the world, this change could have significant social benefit if done correctly.”

This vision of fair, accessible and sustainable elections has taken her around the world with nearly constant travel — the backbone of both the hard work and adventure she referenced when describing the beginning of Everyone Counts. She manages elections, clients, staff and her board of directors.
And she is a newlywed – although she and her husband, Aaron Contorer, have yet to take a honeymoon due to the demands of her business.

Rather than exhausting her, the pace energizes her.

“Each new election, each legislator or diplomat who comes to understand the power of what we do, each speech or hearing — they all bring me closer to that one moment when the person voting is the most important person in the world — when everyone counts.”