Esten said if the Clear Ballot system performs well in those testing grounds, it will provide the foundation of trust necessary to expand into dozens more states in the coming years.

“This is an industry where people talk to each other,” Esten told the Business Journal. “If big counties in Florida have a great experience, that is a tremendous boost in what comes in 2017.”

Clear Ballot hopes to improve on both the hardware and software of existing systems that scan and count paper ballots. First, the Clear Ballot machine itself is cobbled together from off-the-shelf equipment, like an Intel processor, which makes the machines easier to update and keeps election officials from scrambling to find limited replacement parts when proprietary equipment breaks.

Clear Ballot’s software aims to prevent the kind of uncertainty in ballot counting that clouded the 2000 presidential election in Florida and to provide an independent auditing process that gives confidence to voters worried about hacking or other election tampering. The system creates an image file of every paper ballot and lets election officials quickly call up ballots with questionable markings to verify votes. In its audits in Maryland and Florida, Clear Ballot will be recounting ballots originally counted by its competitors, which should uncover any discrepancies brought about by hacked systems or other tampering.

Esten didn’t have specifics on the full size of the market Clear Ballot is targeting, but when Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002 — the last time there was a concerted effort to update voting systems — the federal government provided states about $2 billion to buy new equipment. In a 2015 report, the Brennan Center for Justice estimated it would cost $1 billion just to buy replacements for all the current machines that should be updated. Clear Ballot also charges precincts maintenance and service fees after they’ve purchased new machines.