EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Doug Jones
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/27/2005
Glossary Comments
Glossary Term : | Checksum
Definition : |
Comment : | In response to your request for comments on the draft glossary of voting system terminology, I offer the following, picking up with the letter C, having completed A and B in my previous batch of comments. As before, in each case, I am quoting the original and then offering an alternative definition. Checksum: Computed value representing the sum of the contents of an instance of digital data; used to check whether errors have occurred in transmission or storage. Checksum: Value computed from the content of a document or data record, typically the sum of the numeric representations of all of the characters in the text, used as an aid in detecting errors or alteration during transmission or storage. The term applies equally when this sum is computed using the conventional addition operator or more exotic operations such as the binary exclusive-or and the cyclic redundancy check. Cryptographic signatures and secure hash codes may be considered to be elaborate forms of checksum. -- Comment: This term throws nonspecialists for a loop, and it comes up frequently enough that it needs a decent definition. The original definition was a bit bizarre in its wording: "contents of an instance of digital data"?