HFP Teleconference
Friday, August 4, 2006
2:00 pm EDT

Participants: Allan Eustis, Sharon Laskowski, David Flater, John Cugini, Alexis Scott-Morrison, Whitney Quesenbery, Jim Elekes, David Baquis, Philip Pearce-(Access Board Nominee), Tricia Mason-(Access Board Nominee), Adam Ambrogi-(EAC), Commissioner, Donetta Davidson-(EAC), Wendy Havens

Agenda:

 

0. TGDC and EAC updates, Allan Eustis

1. Summary of the August, 1st USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting workshop, <http://www.usenix.org/events/evt06/tech/>, Sharon Laskowski

2. Status report on new VVSG 2007 HFP draft progress, John Cugini

3. Other progress and items, Sharon Laskowski

Meeting commenced at 2:04 pm EDT

TGDC/EAC Updates:

AE-posting of Dr. Jeffrey's testimony on the web page; See: <http://vote.nist.gov/jeffrey_science20060719.pdf>. Also archived web cast of entire hearing is available for viewing at: <http://boss.streamos.com/real/science/sci06/071906.smi>

Electronic Voting Technology 2006 (EVT'06) Workshop, Vancouver:

SL-reviews discussion and her presentation on usability, Making Ballot Language Understandable to Voters; Co-author Ginny Redish was in attendance along with Sharon Laskowski for the August 1st workshop. (Her presentation slides are available for review at: http://vote.nist.gov/EVT06understandable.pdf.) The paper:

  • discussed importance of clear ballot language in the voting process
  • noted complex issues re language, whether working with electronic or paper ballots; understanding of the instructions is critical to "voting success", Considering the complexity of usability issues voters might (themselves) have
  • Twenty seven recommended guidelines discussed via examples
  • better "best practices" should be in place; context within the instructions; recognizing the relevance a voter puts on visual and/or audible instructions
  • other papers delivered at USENIX also discussed- proximity errors with DREs. There were security related papers as well.

Status Report on new HFP draft progress:

JC-reports on rough draft of the next VVSG (2007) HFP sections. Currently heavily annotated ; presentation and HFP discussions were on various guideline issues, which included definition of what cognitive disability would mean in a broad sense; also discussion of "human readable" versus bar codes (not readable); other topics included usability and its limitations; general situations which include but not limited to:

a) audio vs. video
b) print size for legibility purposes
c) instructions and how "user friendly" they should be
d) if color and graphics would be useful

An early draft of HFP guidelines for 2007 will be sent around in August to HFP for review and initial comment.

  • Discussion of Common Industry Format (CIF) in 2005 VVSG as a heads up to vendors to present data this way.

Other items:

  • NIST monthly meeting with the EAC: brought up matter of seeking clarity from EAC on sub committee work to avoid future guideline ambiguities.

  • SL discussed response time for voting machines and vendor input. (White paper sent out to sub committee earlier); time for notification: between call for action and voter response, standards in IEEE P1583; 3 seconds, 3-10 seconds (alert action) , greater than 10 seconds. (JC suggested one second response time for VVSG 2007.

  • Usability bench mark testing progress: We are two to four weeks away from OMB survey approval.

  • SL noted that an RFP for ballot language research will be out in a week.

  • SL coordinated with Adam Ambrogi of EAC. She will meet with two AIGA representatives next week to discuss, among other issues, usability methodology; AM noted that Nebraska is also working with AIGA on ballot design.

  • WQ and DD discussed University of Utah study and voter perception versus error analysis of observational data. JC noted that you may find error rates higher than expected.

Next HFP meeting scheduled for Wednesday, August 16th at 11:00 AM EST

Meeting Adjourned at 2:45 pm EDT.

 

 

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