ELECTION SERVICES CO.

How inflation and supply chain issues affect our business and what ESC is doing about it

Inflation and supply chain issues is something each of us see every day across all business lines, impacting nearly everything we consume and need.

In our business specifically, we are experiencing these affects in multiple ways. We are impacted by higher electrical costs for our election servers, printing and mailing equipment, as well as computer equipment in general. Maintenance costs for our equipment and associated software has risen sharply, including our military-grade security systems.

Paper manufacturing and delivery for the millions of ballot packages we produce annually have been affected not only by longer production times but also longer and more expensive delivery charges. Some delivery estimates we have been seeing are in the 6-to-8-month timeframes, amounting to over ten times longer than historically delivered in some cases.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has also increased the cost of postage multiple times this year which obviously contributes to overall higher costs. We have also received information that the postage costs will increase again in early 2023.

We sincerely hope that these issues can be somewhat relieved in the short term, but, at the same time, we must anticipate that these will need to be incorporated into ‘business as usual’.

Using our experience as guidelines for the future, we continue to include the following actions in our business process:

• Identify and consolidate various computer components to reduce electrical consumption wherever appropriate.
• Renegotiate maintenance and software contracts with our vendors.
• Actively work with various shipping providers to achieve the best delivery speeds with the lowest delivery costs possible. This includes major carriers like the USPS.
• Continually monitor and research potential cost reduction options for our clients.

In addition to the steps listed above, we have added the following action to our process:

• Secure election material in bulk in anticipation of our clients’ election cycles through our many suppliers. Some elections are projected three to four quarters in advance, bringing them into the 1st and 2nd quarters of next year.

As the oldest and largest independent election services company in the U.S., we are committed to doing everything possible to keep our “family” of clients in compliance while considering budgetary mandates.

ESC has provided its services through historic occurrences including major storms, regional blackouts, and, most recently, the biggest pandemic in the past 100 years. We were able to provide 99.9% availability through our online voting systems as well as ballot delivery services and will continue to do so!

If you have any questions/concerns, please contact your election administrator or me directly at 516-248-4200.

We thank you for your continued loyalty and business.

Respectfully,

Frank Fatone
President
Election Services Co.