EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Deborah Markowitz
Organization : | State of Vermont - Sec. of State
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | My general concern is that the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines do not adequately differentiate between ballot marking devices used in paper based voting systems and direct recording voting systems. Consequently, many of the requirements set out in sections I, 2, 3 and 6 of the guidelines do not make sense when applied to paper ballot marking devices and will add unnecessary costs to the development and testing of such systems. Additionally, insofar as the standards address paper ballot systems they seem to only consider the automark, marksense and punchcard systems. The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines should be written broadly so that it does not hinder the development of other innovative approaches, like the vote by phone system that will be used in Vermont. Accordingly, I respectfully request that the Elections Assistance Commission carefully review all the sections of these guidelines to ensure that only those standards that are relevant to ballot marking devices are applied to those systems, and that the standards that apply to paper ballot voting systems will take into account the many different paper ballot systems that could be used. I thank you for consideration of these comments.