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Voting Methods, Tabulation, and Data Interoperability
The Voting Methods, Tabulation, and Data Interoperability Working Group's (Voting Methods Working Group, (VMWG)) work product is a standard, specification and reference consisting of rigorously and precisely defined models of voting methods or modules including counting, tabulation, mathematical evaluation, and, common operations on vote data sets to support Data Interoperability.
VMWG models include support for varieties of electoral systems or social choice theory (the rules by elections are operated) such as plurality voting, n-of-m voting, range voting, ranked choice voting, approval voting, etc.
The utility of the VMWG's models and specification is that voting methods and modules are implemented accurately and uniformly across common use cases, voting equipment, and with an interoperable Common Data Format (CDF).
VMWG models can be configured and validated for the particular needs of the Elections Official, Election Administrator, electoral jurisdiction (e.g. state or county) and their use cases, including for functions like capacity planning, systems acceptance testing, and systems verification and testing.
Status:
VM-WG is meeting periodically, and also holds focused hands-on working sub-group meeetings, and is developing guidance and a standard intended to be submitted for approval for publishing as a NIST NIST 1500-X standard.
VM-WG ongoing activity includes Drafting guidance, specification and a standard intended to be submitted for approval for publishing as a NIST NIST 1500-X standard.
Rapid prototyping and producing the following:
Rigorously and precisely defined models of voting schemes, voting methods, or modules where counting, tabulation, mathematical evaluation, or common operations on vote data sets are performed in Elections Administration (EA) systems.
A prototype process for knowledge acquisition and representation of EA counting and tabulation methods from the rules and guidelines for administering elections. EA processes are typically specified in written legislation, statute, rules and guidelines, or Request For Proposals (RFP) produced by Elections Officials (EO). English, or any spoken and written language is naturally less precise than a mathematical specification. Specifically, this process extracts the specification of counting and tabulation methods from plain language legislation and rules, and represents the counting and tabulation methods as a Universe suitable for writing mathematical models.
Use Cases:
Use Cases include auditing, aggregation & roll-up, verification, evidence procedures, capacity planning, testing, certification testing, security, information privacy, logging & tracing, common vote selection data set operations, legislative specification, EO specifications for RFIs and RFPs, Cybersecurity.
See also: http://collaborate.nist.gov/voting/bin/view/Voting/VVSGPrinciplesAndGuidelines
Resources: http://collaborate.nist.gov/voting/bin/view/Voting/VotingMethodsModels
Officers:
VM-WG Chair & Editor: Lauren Massa-Lochridge
NIST Chair: John P. Wack
VM-WG Chair: Auditability and Risk Management: Philp B. Stark