Download the Draft Voting System Testing and Certification Program Manual

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is requesting public comments on a draft procedural manual for the voting system testing and certification program. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) directs the EAC to assume responsibility for the certification, de-certification and re-certification of voting system hardware and software used in conducting federal elections and for the accreditation of testing laboratories. This mandate represents the first time the federal government will provide for the voluntary testing and certification of voting systems, nationwide.

In response to the new HAVA requirement, the EAC is developing a program that requires the submission and retention of information related to voting systems and voting system manufacturers.  EAC has released for public comment a draft procedural manual that will be used to obtain the necessary information once the program is in place. This is a voluntary effort by the EAC to gather input from the public on the EAC's administrative procedures for certifying or decertifying voting systems. Please review the manual and submit written or electronic comments according to the instructions contained on the website link below. For further information contact Brian Hancock, Director of Voting System Certification, 1225 New York Avenue, Suite 1100, Washington, D.C., (202) 566-3100, Fax: (202) 566-1392.

Please click on this link to view and comment on the proposed manual.

DEADLINES: Written or electronic comments on this draft procedural manual must be received on or before 5:00 p.m. EDT on October 31, 2006.

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is accepting comments on information gathering activity for the DRAFT 2006 Election Administration and Voting Survey.  Written comments must be submitted on or before Friday, September 29, 2006. The proposed survey can be downloaded in PDF format here. Specifically the EAC is requesting comments on the neccesity and utility of the information being requested in the survey and ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected.

The EAC conducts the survey as part of its role as a national clearinghouse and resource of information regarding election administration as established by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Described as "the largest and most comprehensive survey of voting and election administration practices ever conducted by a U.S. government organization," The 2004 Election Day Survey was distributed to election administrators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and information was received from 6,568 election administration jurisdictions. Subjects covered included voter registraiton, ballots counted, turnout, absentees, provisional ballots, overvotes and undervotes, voting equipment usage, and polling place operations. The results of the 2004 Survey are available for download here.

The survey results, which were released in September, 2005, have been used to draw conclusions about a wide variety of election administration issues, ranging from provisional and absentee ballot procedures to voting technology. Election Data Services (EDS) was contracted to collect, review, and analyze the findings of the 2004 Survey. In an article published shortly after the release of the survey results, Michael McDonald and Kimball Brace of EDS cautioned "While the Election Day Survey holds promise to inform us about voters' election experiences and the administration of elections, the survey also reveals continuing challenges."

This written testimony was submitted by VoteTrustUSA for the Joint Committee of the House Administration and Science Committee on July 19, 2006.

Before this question can be answered, we must first ask if there actually are standards in any real sense of the word. Former Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Chair DeForest Soaries has opined that there are not, and we believe there is considerable support for his argument.¹ While voting system standards do have the potential to solve election problems, it’s clear that to date they have not. Legislation has a much better chance of achieving this goal.

In Sections 221 and 222 of the Help America Vote Act (42 USC 15361 and 15362 respectively), Congress gave the EAC the authority to develop, adopt, publish and modify the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). HAVA also created the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) and officially adopted as its first set of guidelines, the most recent standards developed by the Federal Election Commission prior to the date of HAVA’s enactment. Voting systems in use today are purported to comply with these 2002 standards, but unfortunately “compliance” is a relative term.

While the term “voluntary” as used in the guidelines refers to their adoption by the States, those States that choose to adopt the VVSG constitute a large market for the vendors’ products. Market forces being what they are, buyers must set standards for sellers and sellers must meet those standards; otherwise the buyers can take their business elsewhere. The standards are therefore voluntary for the states but effectively mandatory for any vendors who wish to compete in over 39 States that require federal certification. But the VVSG contains a giant loophole that allows any of the standards therein to be waived by the EAC itself or by its predecessor, the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED).² This has resulted in the certification of non-compliant voting systems.

Some of the standards with which vendors may not have to comply include those that allow the states to verify the authenticity of the software running on their voting machines; those that determine how easy the machines are to use; accessibility requirements for disabled voters; security requirements to prevent unauthorized access to voting systems or the corruption of election data; and even the already lax hardware reliability requirement of only a 163-hour mean time between failures.

The loophole language, which was expanded to include all of the guidelines in the 2005 version, means that at the sole discretion of the EAC, any or all of the standards can be waived to allow approval of non-compliant voting systems. So not only is adoption of the VVSG by the States voluntary, but so is compliance with the VVSG by the vendors. Not even the authors of the guidelines -- the Election Assistance Commission -- are bound to comply with them. The only “standards” that cannot be waived by the EAC are those in the HAVA statute, which can be found in Section 301 (42 USC 15481).

What is even more disturbing is that neither HAVA nor the VVSG contain any requirement for the ability to independently verify the election results generated by voting systems. This allows vendors to offer systems lacking this capability, and they have been doing so eagerly for years, thereby removing any notion of checks and balances from the electoral process.