New IEEE CDF Standard for Electronic Blank Ballot Distribution

New IEEE CDF Standard for Electronic Blank Ballot Distribution     

On January 12, 2012, the IEEE Standards Association published IEEE Std 1622-2011, the IEEE Standard for Electronic Distribution of Blank Ballots for Voting Systems.  This standard specifies electronic data interchange formats for blank ballot distribution, primarily to assist in satisfying the needs of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) and Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. Subsequent standards may address other requirements for electronic data interchange formats used by components of voting systems for exchange of electronic data. This scope does not include return of cast ballots by electronic means.

The new standard, in general, serves the purpose of electronic distribution of blank ballots to uniformed and overseas voters, which can significantly improve timely access to blank ballots. This standard assists the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) and state and local election officials in making available electronic blank ballots to voters, which can then be printed, returned and processed in a manner directly akin to absentee voting. Specifically, it provides an XML schema in OASIS Election Markup Language (EML) for the purposes of exporting from voter registration databases and election management systems, in a common format, the necessary jurisdictional information and ballot definition information to facilitate automated building of electronic blank ballots.  It provides example files and a transform for converting from PEW Voting Information Project (VIP) feeds. This standard is made available for free under sponsorship of the IEEE Standards Association because of the IEEE's desire to support this work of national interest and at the specific request of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). 

This standard is available from the following link: http://standards.ieee.org/getieee/1622/download/1622-2011.pdf.