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Information Technology Laboratory

Voting

Electronic Pollbooks (EPBs) Use Case

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READ-ONLY SITE MATERIALS: Historical voting TWiki site (2015-2020) ARCHIVED from https://collaborate.nist.gov/voting/bin/view/Voting

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The purpose of electronic pollbook (EPB) technology is to identify voters and manage their ballots during election operations.Most typically this involves being able to check-in a voter at a given voting location and, depending on the EPB’s technology platform, it may also able to activate a voter’s ballot before they vote on it. Traditionally, these capabilities were made possible via the EPB’s use of voter registration data, which was often pre-loaded on the EPB so it could function in an offline, standalone mode during the election. In other cases, an EPB is able to access this data via a direct, online connection to its corresponding voter registration system. In still other cases, EPB units may be used at multiple voting locations (e.g., vote centers, etc.) and may be able to connect and synchronize with one another, sharing information such as what voters have checked-in and/or voted at particular locations. In addition to these variations, an EPB may support many additional functions ranging from merely looking up/verifying voter information to supporting ballot generation, activation, as well as others.Thus, in this particular form, an EPB begins to appear as a general election operations technology integration platform. In such cases, it inherits the roles, functions, and responsibilities of its dependent use-cases.

Use Case Scenarios

WHAT | Manage voters during election

HOW | Scenarios: check-in voter, activate voter ballot via

  1. Typical-offline: standalone, offline data from VR, activating voter ballots

  2. Online: Case #1, but via online connections (e.g., online connection to VR)

    1. Connect to other sites:

      1. EPB-to-EPB communication between vote centers

  3. Multi-function: Includes cases #1 and #2, but also supports any additional functions (BoD, BM, Ballot activation, etc.)

    1. e.g.,

      1. Lookup voter information

      2. Verify voter information

      3. Ballot generation

      4. Ballot activation

      5. ...

    2. EPB as election technology integration platform

Request for Feedback

For each use case scenario, please address these questions:

  1. Is the use case scenario in scope for the Next Generation VVSG for development of requirements that will undergo testing and certification? or
  2. Is the use case scenario in scope to develop as guidelines for election officials and voting system manufacturers? or
  3. Is the use case scenario not in scope for this work?
  4. If different parts of the use case scenario fall in 1., 2., and/or 3. Please identify as such.
  5. Is anything missing?
     

Voting TWiki Archive (2015-2020): read-only, archived wiki site, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

ARCHIVE SITE DESCRIPTION AND DISCLAIMER

This page, and related pages, represent archived materials (pages, documents, links, and content) that were produced and/or provided by members of public working groups engaged in collaborative activities to support the development of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. These TWiki activities began in 2015 and continued until early 2020. During that time period, this content was hosted on a Voting TWiki site. That TWiki site was decommissioned in 2020 due to technology migration needs. The TWiki activities that generated this content ceased to operate actively through the TWiki at the time the draft VVSG 2.0 was released, in February of 2020. The historical pages and documents produced there have been archived now in read-only, static form.

  • The archived materials of this TWiki (including pages, documents, links, content) are provided for historical purposes only.
  • They are not actively maintained.
  • They are provided "as is" as a public service.
  • They represent the "work in progress" efforts of a community of volunteer members of public working groups collaborating from late 2015 to February of 2020.
  • These archived materials do not necessarily represent official or peer-reviewed NIST documents nor do they necessarily represent official views or statements of NIST.
  • Unless otherwise stated these materials should be treated as historical, pre-decisional, artifacts of public working group activities only.
  • NIST MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND DATA ACCURACY.
  • NIST does not warrant or make any representations regarding the correctness, accuracy, reliability or usefulness of the archived materials.

ARCHIVED VOTING TWIKI SITE MATERIALS

This wiki was a collaborative website. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these archived TWiki materials. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned in these materials. Archived material on this TWiki site is made available to interested parties for informational and research purposes. Materials were contributed by Participants with the understanding that all contributed material would be publicly available.  Contributions were made by Participants with the understanding that that no copyright or patent right shall be deemed to have been waived by such contribution or disclosure. Any data or information provided is for illustrative purposes only, and does not imply a validation of results by NIST. By selecting external links, users of these materials will be leaving NIST webspace. Links to other websites were provided because they may have information that would be of interest to readers of this TWiki. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not referenced, from this page or these materials. There may be other websites or references that are more appropriate for a particular reader's purpose.

 

Voting systems
Created August 28, 2020, Updated February 5, 2021