Update - December 12
Materials from the meeting, including the webcast and text of the resolutions considered at the meeting, are now available on the NIST website.

Original post - December 5
As I suggested in yesterday’s post the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) did revisit the software independent proposal during today’s session. It was the first item, and by unanimous consent a revised resolution was approved requiring that the next generation of voting machines approved under the next Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). The revisions, as best as I can tell, were meant to address two main concerns from yesterday’s session.

First, while implementation of this next VVSG is approximately 3 years away, several TGDC members (primarily state elections officials) were concerned that currently existing voting systems would have to be scrapped and/or would be considered substandard. Language was inserted into the resolution (which hopefully will be available online later this week) which stipulated that the TGDC is not suggesting that current systems that are following EAC best practices be replaced at this time. Again, given the timeline for development and implementation of this VVSG, this was not likely to happen. At least one member was still confused about the innovation class resolution approved yesterday, as he attempted to insert similar language to the software independent systems resolution.

Second, specific direction was given to the TGDC subcommittees (and the related NIST staff) to develop requirements for software independent systems. the Security and Transparency Subcommittee (STS) and the Core Requirements and Testing Subcommittee (CRT) are responsible for requirements to assure independent verifiability of these systems. The STS and the Human Factors and Privacy Subcommittee (HFP) are responsible for developing usability and accessibility requirements.

The TGDC received the rest of the CRT briefing and the full HPS briefing this morning. Most of the revisions to the VVSG are small, focusing on clarifying ambiguous language from the 2005 VVSG. The rest of the day’s business focused on other resolutions.

Several resolutions that were expected to be considered were withdrawn in the interests of focusing on the VVSG. A resolution concerned with ensuring that tested systems conformed to their accompanying documentation failed in part due to vagueness with respect to application. The resolution about disallowing continuous paper rolls was not offered, contrary to what I expected yesterday.

Three other resolutions were passed prior to adjournment. One outlined five principle criteria - security, accuracy, reliability, usability, and accessibility. These criteria were considered sufficiently important that the TGDC recommended that the EAC have the discretion to deny certification to any system that otherwise meets certification, if they find any of the principle criteria were violated. In other words, if there’s an issue with a voting system not covered in the rest of the VVSG, the EAC can deny certification to a system that demonstrates failure in any of the principle criteria.

Another resolution will have the TGDC recommend to the Interagency Committee on Disability Research address voting system accessibility for one of their future conferences. The TGDC also formally commended NIST for moving away from Mean Time Between Failure as a reliability benchmark. All three of these resolutions passed with unanimous consent.

The TGDC will next meet sometime in March, and possibly again in June. Look at the TGDC website for their white papers and presentation slides from this meeting (sometime in the next few days). The Election Assistance Commission will meet on Thursday, and may speak to some of the things discussed at this meeting. Look to this blog for a post on that meeting.

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