EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Robert Kibrick
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/27/2005
Glossary Comments
Glossary Term : | Directly Verified / Directly Verifiable
Definition : |
Comment : | Directly Verifiable: Voting system that allows the voter to verify at least one representation of his or her ballot with his/her own senses, not using any software or hardware intermediary. Examples of a directly verifiable voting system include DRE with a voter verified paper trail or marksense system. This is in contrast with an indirectly verifiable voting system. Association: voting, security Source: no attribution As noted earlier, the term “ballot” has multiple meanings, and its use in this definition could be misconstrued as applying to an unmarked ballot, i.e., that a voting system is “directly verifiable” if the voter is able to directly verify that he or she has been issued the correct unmarked ballot on which to begin voting. There is nothing in the language of this definition that requires the voter to be able to directly verify that his or her selections/choices have been accurately captured on the “ballot” that is being verified. Although that requirement might be inferred by the examples given, it should be made explicit in the definition. Furthermore, this definition deftly ducks the issue of whether the “one representation of his or her ballot” is the actual entity (i.e., the “fundamental representation”) that is used both for initial counts and audits/recounts (as is the case for a marksense system) or only the latter (in the case of a DRE-VVPAT). By lumping both cases together under the category “Directly Verifiable”, these important distinctions are blurred, and these two significantly differening levels of verification are treated as if they were equivalent, when clearly they are not.