What Free & Fair does

Free & Fair is a Portland, Oregon-based election technology company spun out of Galois in May 2016 that develops open-source, formally verified election systems applying Rigorous Digital Engineering (RDE), a model-driven methodology combining formal methods, domain engineering, requirements engineering, formal architecture, and formal verification. The company's product portfolio centers on cryptographic voting protocols designed to provide end-to-end verifiability: VoteSecure SDK (the open-source cryptographic core for end-to-end verifiable Internet voting released November 2025), ElectionGuard SDK (co-developed with Microsoft), Risk Limiting Audit systems, Qubie (polling place wait-time monitor), and supporting tools including OpenCount, Tabulator, STAR-Vote, and the DVL electronic poll book. All products are released as open source and are designed to provide software independence, public auditability, and mathematically proven correctness rather than relying on testing-based assurance. The underlying technology stack spans Coq-verified implementations, Haskell prototypes, threshold cryptography, mixnets, and zero-knowledge proofs.

Free & Fair serves two primary customer segments: government election officials and jurisdictions (State of Colorado being the marquee paying customer for the statewide RLA system since 2017), and election technology vendors that integrate Free & Fair's cryptographic cores into commercial voting platforms (Sequent, VotingWorks, and others). Secondary counterparties include defense and research entities (DARPA via the SSITH program at parent Galois, ~$10M), philanthropic funders (Tusk Philanthropies, which has provided consecutive grants in 2023 and July 2024), and academic collaborators (Verificatum's Dr. Douglas Wikstr\u00f6m). The company employs 1-10 people and has released over 250,000 lines of code and formal specifications across 30+ open-source repositories, representing more than 15 man-years of work by nearly 100 contributors.

Free & Fair's revenue model rests on three streams: one-off government contracts for custom software (e.g., Colorado RLA), research and development grant funding from foundations and government agencies (Tusk Philanthropies, DARPA), and professional services including consulting, reviews, and gap analyses of existing digital absentee voting systems. Pricing is not publicly disclosed; the company sells through bespoke RFP/RFI procurement processes with government and non-profit buyers. Go-to-market is enterprise field sales into government jurisdictions with long, consultative sales cycles and formal certification processes, supplemented by an OEM strategy positioning VoteSecure as an integrable cryptographic core for election technology vendors. The company is led by CEO and Chief Scientist Joe Kiniry and operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Galois.

Name

Free & Fair

Legal name

Free & Fair

Website

https://freeandfair.us

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Free & Fair is a Portland-based election technology spin-out of Galois that develops open-source, formally verified cryptographic voting protocols and election-audit systems for government jurisdictions and election technology vendors. It generates revenue through government contracts, philanthropic grants, and consulting services.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Election Technology / Voting Systems

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132)

SIC

Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

Electoral Support & Election Observation (BPADAGAA)

Keywords

• Election technology systems
• Cryptographic voting protocols
• End-to-end verifiable voting
• Risk limiting audits
• Open source voting software

Headquarters

HQ city

Portland

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations

Revenue model

1. Government Contracts: Free & Fair generates revenue through direct contracts with government entities. The company was selected by the State of Colorado to develop a software system for risk-limiting audits, and pursued similar government procurement opportunities through RFP/RFI responses.
2. Research and Development Funding: The company receives funding from foundations and government agencies for R&D projects. In July 2024, Free & Fair was funded by Tusk Philanthropies to develop an open source high-assurance cryptographic protocol library for E2E-VIV.
3. Professional Services / Consulting: Free & Fair provides consulting services to government election officials and jurisdictions, responding to RFIs and RFPs with detailed proposals. They also perform reviews and gap analyses of existing digital absentee voting systems.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Free & Fair develops open-source, formally verified election technology including cryptographic voting protocols (VoteSecure SDK), end-to-end verifiable voting tools (ElectionGuard SDK), risk-limiting audit systems, polling-place monitoring hardware (Qubie), and a DARPA SSITH secure hardware demonstrator. Their products apply rigorous digital engineering and formal methods to provide cryptographically verifiable election security, transparency, and software independence for government jurisdictions and election technology vendors.

Product overview

Free & Fair is an election technology spin-out of Galois that develops high-assurance, open source election systems. The product portfolio centers on cryptographic voting protocols and verification tools: VoteSecure SDK provides the foundational cryptographic protocol for mobile/Internet voting with end-to-end verifiability; ElectionGuard SDK offers end-to-end verifiable voting; Risk Limiting Audits (RLA) enables post-election ballot verification; Qubie monitors polling place wait times; and supporting tools include OpenCount (ballot scanning), Tabulator (vote counting), STAR-Vote (Haskell election system), and DVL (electronic poll book). All products are open source and designed for formal verification and public auditability.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• VoteSecure SDK: A cryptographic library for end-to-end verifiable mobile voting
• ElectionGuard SDK
• Qubie
• Risk Limiting Audits

Products and services

• VoteSecure SDK Open source cryptographic voting protocol library providing the secure core for end-to-end verifiable Internet voting (E2E-VIV) systems. Enables cast-as-intended, recorded-as-cast, and counted-as-recorded verification with software independence, public auditability, threshold cryptography, mixnets, zero-knowledge proofs, and air-gapped tabulation. Designed for election technology vendors and government jurisdictions.
• ElectionGuard SDK End-to-end verifiable voting SDK enabling trustworthy election technology with verifiable proof of accuracy and integrity, developed in collaboration with Microsoft. Aimed at government election officials and election technology vendors.
• Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) System Software system enabling state and local election officials to conduct widely available risk-limiting audits, allowing officials to double-check paper ballots against digital tallies to verify correct tabulation.
• Qubie Open hardware privacy-preserving polling place monitor that records voter flow by analyzing smartphone signals, enabling election officials to optimize polling place efficiency and reduce wait times.
• DARPA SSITH Secure Hardware Demonstrator Voting system demonstrator built to show secure hardware research, part of DARPA's SSITH (Systemic Security from Hardware and Software) program with approximately $10 million in funding to parent company Galois.
• OpenCount System that interprets scanned paper ballots and converts them into cast vote records; can understand proprietary file formats from other vendors' equipment and semi-automatically determine ballot shape and nature.
• Tabulator Vote tabulator capable of counting cast vote records to determine outcomes for plurality or ranked choice voting elections; formally specified and verified in the Coq theorem prover.
• STAR-Vote Demonstration Haskell implementation of a complete election system using Haskell's rich type system to characterize correct behavior, providing a fraction of the size of other implementations.
• DVL (Electronic Poll Book) Electronic poll book system with demonstration implementations in C#, using Microsoft Code Contracts for behavioral specifications.

Quantifiable outcome

• VoteSecure implementation by Sequent has supported over 330 elections and served more than 9.2 million voters across North America, Europe, and Asia
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers9 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered flagship, core and minor.

• SequentflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 November 2025Sequent led a rigorous digital engineering effort alongside Free & Fair to design, formalize, implement, and assure VoteSecure's open-source cryptographic core. Sequent contributed core architecture and implementation of the cryptographic subsystem, with many years of experience implementing and deploying mission-critical cryptographic algorithms and protocols for election systems.
• VerificatumcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 November 2025Verificatum, led by Dr. Douglas Wikström, provided decades of expertise in open-source verifiable mix-nets and client-side cryptography, advised on protocol design and security proofs for VoteSecure. The VoteSecure protocol is specified as a chapter in Dr. Wikström's draft 'Electronic Voting Systems' book.
• State of ColoradoflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2017Colorado selected Free & Fair to build a risk-limiting audit (RLA) system for statewide use beginning with the November 2017 general election. Colorado became the first state to regularly conduct risk-limiting audits using Free & Fair's software.
• GaloiscoreOthers · 1 May 2016Free & Fair is a spin-out of Galois, a Portland-based computer science R&D firm. Galois developed the foundational technology on which Free & Fair's election technology is based. Free & Fair operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Galois.
• MicrosoftflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2016Free & Fair works with Microsoft on the ElectionGuard SDK initiative, an open-source end-to-end verifiable voting SDK. Microsoft unveiled ElectionGuard at a 2019 event, and Free & Fair is listed as a client/partner alongside Microsoft in their election technology ecosystem.
• OSET InstituteminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe OSET Foundation is listed as a client and partner on Free & Fair's website. Free & Fair has collaborated with the OSET Institute on proposals and research funding applications, including work referenced in requirements engineering for VoteSecure.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Scytl: Provider of secure online voting and election modernization platforms with cryptographic protocols. Direct functional peer in end-to-end verifiable Internet voting, though Scytl focuses on international jurisdictions where Free & Fair is not yet active.
• VotingWorks: Open-source election technology nonprofit that builds auditable voting and ballot-management tools. Listed as a Free & Fair client/partner and competes for the same auditable-election-tooling mindshare and government contracts.
• Sequent: Election technology vendor that has implemented Free & Fair's VoteSecure cryptographic core in its commercial platform, serving 330+ elections and 9.2M+ voters. Functions both as a partner and a downstream competitor for election systems contracts.

Broad incumbents

• Election Systems & Software (ES&S): Dominant U.S. election equipment vendor providing voting machines, tabulators, and election management software. Competes with Free & Fair in the broader election technology procurement market, though ES&S relies on proprietary rather than open-source, formally verified systems.
• Hart InterCivic: Long-standing U.S. election systems provider offering voting hardware and software to jurisdictions. Competes in the same government procurement space as Free & Fair's RLA and VoteSecure offerings, though with a traditional proprietary product model.
• Smartmatic: Global election technology vendor providing voting machines and integrated election solutions. Comparable as a competitor in the election technology market, though Smartmatic operates in different geographies and is primarily proprietary.
• Dominion Voting Systems: Major U.S. and Canadian election technology vendor offering voting machines and election management systems. Competes for the same government contracts Free & Fair targets but uses a proprietary, closed-source approach that Free & Fair explicitly positions against.
• Microsoft ElectionGuard: Microsoft's open-source SDK for end-to-end verifiable voting, co-developed with Free & Fair. A broader incumbent platform that overlaps directly with Free & Fair's ElectionGuard/VoteSecure offerings and competes for thought leadership and vendor mindshare.

Others

• Galois: Free & Fair's parent company and the computer science R&D firm from which it was spun out. Adjacent rather than directly competitive, but Galois controls Free & Fair's strategic direction, IP, and access to DARPA-funded research.

Emerging players

• OSET Institute / OSET Foundation: Non-profit election technology organization that operates The TrustTheVote Project. Listed as a Free & Fair partner and works in adjacent open-source election infrastructure, making it a comparable non-profit peer in the election technology ecosystem.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/free_and_fair
• GitHubgithub.com/FreeAndFair

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Free & Fair