Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC)
Human Factors and Privacy Subcommittee (HFP)*
May 4, 2007
Draft Minutes

DRAFT AGENDA

1. Administrative Updates (Allan Eustis)
2. Discussion of further edits of Usability and Accessibility VVSG chapter.
3. Report back on any items of interests from this weeks STS subcommittee telecon.
4. Other issues

Attendees: Alexis Scott-Morrison, Allan Eustis, David Baquis (U.S. Access Board), John Cugini, John Wack, Jon Crickenberger (NVLAP), Nelson Hastings, Philip Pearce, Sharon Laskowski, Tricia Mason, Wendy Havens, Whitney Quesenbery

Administrative Updates (Allan Eustis):

  • Only 2 weeks left until the TGDC plenary meeting. Allan and John Wack working on agenda to go to EAC today (5/4/07). There was a Committee member request that STS not be first to report at the plenary meeting. The proposed scheduled is now CRT - HFP - STS. Internal Web page is available with meeting information - more documents will be added as it becomes available (see http://vote.nist.gov/TGDC/TGDCmeeting052107.htm). Meeting Materials CD will be sent FedEx to TGDC members about a week before the meeting.

  • Next steps after plenary - There will continue to be subcommittee teleconferences as needed. Mark Skall hopes that final document editing would be turned over to NIST with final editing approval and delivery by TGDC chair - Bill Jeffrey. Members of TGDC present at today's meeting were uncomfortable with that. Whitney feels that there not be another plenary meeting, but a series of (public) teleconferences scheduled to approve chapter by chapter of the report. She feels there are too many controversial issues still to be discussed and approved by members of the TGDC. John Wack/Allan to report to Mark Skall so that this can be addressed in pre- briefing with Dr. Jeffrey.

Discussion of Chapter Edits (Sharon Laskowski):

Sharon forwarded a copy of the issues/concerns from last meeting to Whitney and Tricia. Whitney agreed with the changes as proposed.

Today's meeting will cover two major issues that can hopefully be resolved to be put into May 9th draft due to Allan Eustis.

Sharon's proposed rewording for the accessibility read back requirement: "If the Acc-VS generates a paper record (or some other durable, human-readable record) for the purpose of allowing voters to verify their ballot choices, then the system shall provide a means to ensure that the paper-based vote verification is accessible to all users with disabilities, as identified in section XXX."

The requirement as written is vague and untestable. Sub-requirements need to be written that are clear and testable. Sharon mentioned that STS had concerns about the goals of this requirement - John Wack and Whitney expressed that those concerns have already been addressed. Whitney posed the question about whether standards are being written for current system or future states of systems. HFP has been very clear about writing hi-level and sub-requirements to be very precise about what the requirements are. HFP's requirements deal with individuals mainly as opposed to the election as a whole, which is more to what STS and CRT are writing requirements towards.

John Cugini brought up the subject of what the sub-requirements for this requirement should be. Anything besides the audio read back? What about something for low vision voters or people with dexterity issues? Committee discussed the question about electronic ballot markers (EBMs) being used as read back mechanisms. STS subcommittee has a big concern about how much these additional requirements will cost election officials. It was decided that EBMs were acceptable as you could either put the ballot back in the same machine or take it to another machine for read back. Whitney pointed out that this read back is fine since it is not generated from the internal memory of the machine which is not acceptable.

The issue of privacy during transport from one machine to the verification machine was discussed. Preservation of privacy is a major issue. Using an envelope to transport was discussed. Not the best solution for individuals with dexterity issues. These things will be tested during the performance tests. We want to make sure that we write requirements that the vendor can look at and tell if there system should pass the tests.

It was decided that the requirement would be written with a couple sub-requirements to cover the audio read back, electronic magnification, dexterity (which is in the original standard), and privacy concerns. The audio readback can not be generated from the internal memory.

OTHER: Reminder, the benchmarks will not be here before the May 9th deadline. EAC has agreed that the report should be written with the information and the numbers can be changed or added later when they are received.

Cost of Testing Meeting:

John Cugini attended the cost of testing meeting. Sharon had come up with a rough estimate of $35K to $40K, to which there seemed to be no objection. HFP will have to show how they got there test results.

Our next telecon is scheduled for: Friday, May 11, 2007 at 11 AM ET


[* Pursuant to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the TGDC is charged with directing NIST in performing voting systems research so that the TGDC can fulfill its role of recommending technical standards for voting equipment to the EAC. This teleconference discussion serves the purposes of the HFP subcommittee of the TGDC to direct NIST staff and coordinate its voting-related research relevant to the VVSG 2007. Discussions on this telecon are preliminary and do not necessarily reflect the views of NIST or the TGDC.]

 

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