Constituency Groups

Purpose

The purpose of the Constituency Groups is to support the development of standards around the most stable aspect of elections possible: the Election Process.

The overall election process can be understood as an overall series of steps or functions that must take place in each essential phase of the overall election itself including actions an election system must support before, during, and after an election.

Organization of standardization in this way recognizes the fact that technologies used for implementing election systems change much more rapidly than do the underlying processes. Thus, as new technologies and implementation strategies rapidly change and new solutions emerge they can be organized to implement existing processes in new ways. To implement an election process is to implement its functions.

As voting standards strive to remain relevant with emerging technologies, this new organization provides a place where all stakeholders can meet to discuss what technological solutions are available to implement election processes in new ways. Novel solutions will introduce new challenges and give birth to new insights regarding how security, usability, accessibility, interoperability, and testing must take place in order to ensure that a given election system technology implementation can fulfill these functions in these emerging contexts in a satisfactory manner.

Working Groups

Constituency working groups have been organized so as to provide a way to formally facilitate these crucial conversations in a nimble fashion.

The groups include:

1. Cyber Security Public Working Group
2. Human Factors Public Working Group
3. Interoperability Public Working Group
4. Testing Public Working Group

The working group mailing lists are:

• vvsg-cybersecurity [at] list.nist.gov (vvsg-cybersecurity[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) - main mailing list for the Cyber Security Working Group
• vvsg-human-factors [at] list.nist.gov (vvsg-human-factors[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) - main mailing list for the Human Factors Working Group
• vvsg-interoperability [at] list.nist.gov (vvsg-interoperability[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) – main mailing list for the Interoperability Working Group
• vvsg-testing [at] list.nist.gov (vvsg-testing[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) - main mailing list for the Testing Working Group

Mailing lists specific to the Common Data Format (CDF) development are:

• vvsg-cvr [at] list.nist.gov (vvsg-cvr[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) – for the cast vote records CDF list
• ovr [at] list.nist.gov (ovr[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) – for the voter records interchange/online voter registration CDF list
• voting-methods [at] list.nist.gov (voting-methods[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) – for the voting methods/models CDF list
• election-modeling [at] list.nist.gov (election-modeling[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) – for the election process modeling CDF list
• election-results [at] list.nist.gov (election-results[at]list[dot]nist[dot]gov) – for the election results reporting CDF list

The working groups use Google Groups for managing the email lists. If you have a Gmail address or Google account, you can join a group and post to the mailing list and access the email archives; non-Google users can still post and access the email archives but to join, you must send an email to the group administrator. A Google account permits you to continue using your non-Gmail address but signs you in to Google; for information on how to obtain a Gmail address or Google account, please see

https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail

How to Join a Group or Manage your Membership in a Group

If you do not have a Gmail address or Google account, please send an email to the following address and include your name and preferred email address(es) and which group(s) you wish to join:

voting [at] nist.gov (voting[at]nist[dot]gov)

If you do have a Gmail address or Google account:

1. Go to the following URL: https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov
2. Click on the “Browse all” button to find groups to join, and click on the name of each group you wish to join.
3. Click on the “Join group to post” button and set up your email account preferences. You’re done!

Here is a useful article with further information about Google groups:

https://gsuite.google.com/learning-center/products/groups/get-started

How to Read a Group’s Email Archives

Google and non-Google users can read a group’s email archives. Do the following:

1. Go to the following URL: https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov
2. Click on the “Browse all” button to find the group whose archive you wish to access.
3. Click on the name of the group.

    

Working Group Mailing List Policies

• No Proprietary Information Exchanged
• Standing Rules
• Etiquette