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Displaying 1 - 25 of 73

Designing Usable Audio for Voting Systems: Best Practices and a Test Approach

January 31, 2025
Author(s)
Lynn Baumeister, Whitney Quesenbery, Sharon J. Laskowski
Voting systems must support multiple interaction modes: presenting information both visually and auditorily, accepting navigation and selections from both screen touches and key presses on a tactile controller. The best practices outlined in this document

Measuring social consensus

November 18, 2024
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Many organizations describe their processes as consensus-driven, but there is no consensus on the definition of consensus. Qualitative definitions of consensus prioritize social phenomena like "unity" that are not necessarily measurable. Quantitative

A Review of the Literature on Voter Verification and Ballot Review

July 8, 2024
Author(s)
Whitney Quesenbery, Suzanne Chapman, Christopher Patten, Roberto Spreggiaro, Shanee Dawkins
One of the major issues for voting systems today is whether they provide voters with a meaningful opportunity to verify their ballot before casting it. This opportunity is important in helping them vote their intent by catching errors or omissions made

How Voters Review and Verify Ballots

July 8, 2024
Author(s)
Suzanne Chapman, Lynn Baumeister, Whitney Quesenbery, Shanee Dawkins
Qualitative research to gain deeper insights about how voters mark, review, verify, and cast their ballots. Conducted as part of the work to update the human factors—accessibility, privacy, and usability—requirements in federal voting system standards and

Usability for Poll Workers: A Voting System Usability Test Protocol

May 8, 2024
Author(s)
Dana Chisnell, Sharon J. Laskowski, Karen Bachmann, Svetlana Z. Lowry
In this paper, we discuss our efforts to develop a repeatable test protocol for assessing usability for poll workers – temporary election officials who ensure secure and private voting in voting places. The research described in this paper is part of a

Cybersecurity Framework Election Infrastructure Profile

February 1, 2024
Author(s)
Gema Howell, Mary C. Brady, Julie Snyder, David Weitzel, M. Schneider, Christina Sames, Joshua Franklin
This document is a Cybersecurity Framework Profile developed for voting equipment and information systems supporting elections. This Election Infrastructure Profile can be utilized by election administrators and IT professionals managing election

Administering Accessible Vote by Mail Systems

January 25, 2023
Author(s)
Lynn Baumeister, Whitney Quesenbery, Sharon J. Laskowski
Accessible vote by mail (AVBM) provides options for voters with disabilities to complete their absentee or vote by mail ballots independently and privately. AVBM is especially important for voters with print disabilities that make it difficult to read or

Handbook for VVSG 2.0 Usability and Accessibility Test Strategies

January 25, 2023
Author(s)
Whitney Quesenbery, Sharon J. Laskowski
This document provides guidance and resources for how to test voting systems against the usability and accessibility requirements in the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. The requirements include Principles 2.2 and 5 through 8. The goal of

Ballot Definition Common Data Format Specification

January 24, 2023
Author(s)
Benjamin Long, John Dziurlaj
This publication describes a ballot definition common data format for the interchange of logical and physical ballot style information. It contains a UML (Unified Modeling Language) model of the election data and a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and XML

Micro Common Data Format Specification

January 23, 2023
Author(s)
Benjamin Long, John Dziurlaj
This specification describes a data format for space-constrained environments, such as the placement of machine readable data on paper. The specification is responsive to a need for interoperability in several key voting system scenarios in which the use

Gap Analysis for Key Interoperability Scenarios in Election Technology

August 1, 2022
Author(s)
John Dziurlaj, Benjamin Long
This document describes potential use-cases for data interoperability in election technology components not previously considered in past efforts. Such components include on-demand ballot printing systems, remote ballot marking systems and electronic poll

Recommendations for Voting System Interoperability

August 1, 2022
Author(s)
John Dziurlaj, Benjamin Long
There is currently no common data format for ballot styles and associated use-cases. This white paper investigates this and other potential interoperability gaps within the voting system in a holistic manner, by considering previous voting interoperability
Displaying 1 - 25 of 73