US Election Assistance Commission - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines Vote
EAC Home
Introduction
View Guidelines
View Comments
Glossary

View Comments

Section CommentsGeneral CommentsGlossary Comments
 
Name :   Justin Moore
Organization :   Duke
Post Date :   9/30/2005

General Comments
Comment :  I was disappointed in how vague and ineffective these standards are.  We are talking about establishing standards
for protecting our democratic process, and we can't even bother to establish FAA-level or FDA-style
standards for our voting equipment.  I was also deeply upset by the level of control the vendors had
over the process.  The IEEE working group that did most of the heavy lifting was chaired by a vendor
employee.  Reports from the meetings indicated that the committee members showed a great amount of
deference to existing systems, as opposed to creating the write standards.

In short, these standards were written to meet the products, and not the other way around.