Comparison of Draft Voting Technology Standards Documents
Summary | Legend | Comparison Documents
On June 7, 2005, EPIC obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request the Voting Standards draft developed by the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) and presented to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC): Since that time the EAC has released its own draft Voting Technology Standards document for public comment. The comparison of the two documents conducted by EPIC is available on this page. All public comment must be sent to the EAC by 5:00 PM on September 30, 2005.
This document was prepared by the National Committee for Voting Integrity to allow users to track the changes made by the Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”) to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (“VVSG”). Version 1 of the VVSG, hereinafter referred to as the TGDC draft, was created by the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (“TGDC”) and delivered to the EAC on May 9, 2005. The final draft of the VVSG, hereinafter referred to as the EAC draft, was finalized and made available to the public by the EAC on June 27, 2005.
The following documents seek to outline the changes made to the EAC version of the VVSG. EPIC welcomes all suggestions and comments and ask that they be directed to the Voting Project at EPIC. All written correspondence can be sent to 1718 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 200, Washington DC, 20009, or e-mailed to . For more information on voting privacy please visit http://epic.org/privacy/voting/.
The document was compared, using Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac. Version 1 of the VVSG (“TGDC Version”), to the EAC version.
How to Read the Comparison Document
• All bubbles/boxes on the right hand side of the document are the text that was deleted/removed from the TGDC version. Due to the length of some deleted sections, the reader will have to scroll to the bottom of the document to read a significant portion of the deleted text. A horizontal line followed by page, date, and time information indicates that the reader must see the original TGDC draft to see the entire section of deleted material. Note that the sections that were deleted are long, so it is necessary to print all parts of the comparison document to see that information.
• Any text underlined is new text added to the EAC version and is located in the body of the document.
• Any text not underlined was carried over from the TGDC version.
• The page numbers located in the middle of the document correspond to the page numbers from the EAC version and
not the TGDC version.
• All headers and footers were deleted to help with the clarity of reading the document.
• In Section 2, all diagrams have been removed from this document for clarity purposes. The diagrams in the TGDC draft
were compared to the EAC draft and no changes were found.
• Also in Section 2, all figures were removed from this document for clarity purposes. The diagrams in the TGDC draft were compared to the EAC draft and no changes were found.
• Pages 2-44 through 2-46 (Section 2) of the PDF version are missing in the EAC draft. EPIC called and notified the EAC about the missing pages. The EAC told EPIC that this is the first time it was brought to their attention and that it was most likely a typo, but they will look into it.Comparison Documents:
Section 1 Introduction, Part 2
Section 2 Technical Capabilities, Part 2, Part 3
Section 3 Hardware, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Section 5 Telecommunications (No Substantive Changes)
Section 6 Security, Part 2, Part 3 (Note in the EAC version this section is now in Appendix C)
Section 7 Quality Assurance
Section 8 Configuration Management, Part 2, Part 3
Section 9 Overview of Qualification Testing (New Section not part of the TGDC Version)
*Volume Two, Testing Standards and the Appendices are not part of this web page.