ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,327,435, issued on June 10, was assigned to Hart InterCivic Inc. (Austin, Texas).

"Systems and methods for validating and subsequently thermally obfuscating a paper ticket used to access an electronic voting device" was invented by Viktor Partyshev (Round Rock, Texas) and James M. Canter (Austin, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments of systems and methods are provided to enable voters to access an electronic voting device and activate a corresponding ballot style without manual poll worker intervention or communicating information across a network. More specifically, an improved electronic voting device is provided having a t...