EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Kimball W. Brace
Organization : | Election Data Services, Inc.
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | CAPABILITIES FOR THE PRODUCTION OF DATABSE FILES OF ELECTION RETURNS FOR VOTE TALLYING SOFTWARE One of the difficulties in gathering precinct level information involves the wide variety of formats of printed reports produced by vote tallying software. Keypunching of this information means that each county’s information has to be analyzed and potentially formatted separately before a single number is entered. As part of the NIST development of voting equipment standards, we recommend that the EAC ensure that all vote tally-ing software be required to produce a database file of the election results and basic information outlined in this report. The EAC and NIST should outline the minimum geographic identifiers that should be in the database files, as well as the basic in-formation. The basic information would include, among other items, both overvote and undervote counts for each office and contest on the ballot. (Recommendation No. 6 of the Final Report of the 2004 Election Day Survey, submitted to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, September 27, 2005.)