Transcript Election Data Standards Requirements: Getting on with what we’ve got John L.

Election Data Standards Requirements:
Getting on with what we’ve got
John L. McCarthy, volunteer
Verified Voting Foundation
Common Elections Data Format Workshop
National Institute for Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, Maryland 29-30 October, 2009
Overview & Review
Background for election data standards
• Who needs & uses election data? (clients)
• What kinds of election data are required?
• When are election data needed for what purposes?
• What objectives would data standards help meet?
• How are these needs currently being met?
– in the United States?
– In other countries?
• What characterizes good data format standards?
• Why can’t we simply use EML (& extend as necessary)?
– OASIS Election Markup Language (dialect of W3C XML)
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Who needs & uses election data (& how)?
Potential clients for election data standards
• Voting systems vendors and system developers
– component communications, system integration, testing, reporting
• Election officials – local, state, and national (EAC, …)
– ballot definition, testing, reporting, aggregation, auditing
• Election management consultants & contractors
– systems integration, contract work for election officials
• News media (TV, radio, print, web)
– reporting results, predicting outcomes & analyzing trends
• Candidates, political parties & organizations
– deciding whether to concede, claim victory or dispute results
• Citizens, citizen organizations & academic researchers
– pre and post election auditing, analyzing detailed results
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What kinds of election data are required?
• Election districts & district boundaries
• Voter registration information & eligible voter lists
• Candidate nominations & approved candidate lists
• Referendum options and approved options lists
• Ballot definition information (for each jurisdiction)
• Election vote records, counts, results, and statistics
• Cast Vote Records (CVR) for each individual ballot
– including outcomes for each voting opportunity (choice)
– e.g., vote recorded, blank, too many choices, unrecognized
• Logs from each individual piece of voting equipment
• Audit information pertinent to all the above categories
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What detailed components are needed
for vote tabulation audits?
•GEOGRAPHIC IDENTIFIERS
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State, County
Sub-county jurisdiction(s), if any (e.g., city, township)
Precinct
Other Aggregation Unit Identifiers (e.g., state assembly district,
water district)
•Voting Method (early, absentee, in-precinct, provisional,
•Ballot Type and/or party (for primary elections)
•FOR EACH CONTEST
– Contest (e.g., Governor, State Assembly, City Council, Water Board)
– Choice (candidate or position Y/N)
Summary records typically contain counts for each choice and some systems’
cast vote records for individual ballots may show how each choice was counted -vote, blank, too many choices (overvote), or unrecognized mark.
SoS’s & others also need standards for various types of election audit reports
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When are election data needed?
• Preceding an election
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–
–
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system development & testing
logic and accuracy testing & test results
jurisdiction boundaries, ballot types, voting places
ballot design and contents (candidates, ballot measures, etc.)
registered & eligible voters
• During an election
– problem reports
– individuals who have voted
• Election night
– detailed vote counts by polling place, type (in-person, absentee),
candidate, ballot measure choices, overvotes, undervotes
– Individual Cast Vote Records (CVR) for each ballot
• Before certification of final results
– audit results, including resolution of any discrepancies found
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Objectives that election data standards
can help us achieve
• Timely & Transparent Reporting
– aggregation within local jurisdictions & from local to state
– to media, interested organizations & the general public
– to help support pre and post-election auditing
• Lower costs & improved Accuracy
– Improve transparency & testing of ballot definition
– connect registration, pollbooks, and reporting
– facilitate transition to electronic record-keeping
• Interoperability
– between components from a single vendor
– among different components from different vendors
• Auditability
– detailed data available immediately following each election
– machine-readable reports broken down in arbitrary ways
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How are these needs currently being met?
• In the United States…
– very little standardization
• data exchange via poorly documented proprietary formats
• election management systems produce human readable reports
– some exceptions
• CA SoS media feed 2008, 2009
• IL translation programs for EAC data collection grant program
• In other countries
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–
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Council of Europe recommends EML for interoperability (2004)
Australian Electoral Commission EML Media Feed (since 2007)
UK e-voting pilots and CORE registration project use EML
Belgium uses EML for local elections in Flanders (2006-7)
Others?
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What kinds of data and metadata do current
commercial vote tabulation systems provide?
Human Readable Reports
John L. McCarthy Election Data Standards Requirements – October 2009 NIST Workshop
e.g., Hart-Intercivic (Crystal Reports)
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What would characterize good
election data format standards?
• Machine-readable, structured components
– separate elements for each distinct type of information
• (e.g., state, county, precinct, type, contest, candidate, undervotes)
– easy to render into different formats
– modular structures/schemas for different kinds of data
• (e.g., ballot definition, geography, tabulation results, …)
• Well-defined and documented data elements & structures
– preferably defined by & data verifiable via formal schema
• Quasi-human-readable
– data volume does not require serious compression (e.g., ASN.1)
– easy to render into different human-readable & machine formats
• Compatible with tools for translation, rendering & storage
– e.g., XML: style sheets, schema, databases; web services; XSLT
• Developed through standards consensus process
– input and discussion from all stake-holders, trial use, etc.
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Doesn’t EML (Election Markup Language)
meet most if not all of these requirements?
• Dialect of XML (current lingua franca for data exchange)
• Developed by OASIS Technical Committee (since 2001)
– participation by vendors and election experts
– currently completing work on version 6.0 (still time for feedback!)
– OASIS will propose EML 6.0 as ISO standard early in 2010
• Flexible, extensible, modular framework
– version 6.0 includes new elements & features to support US voting
– V 6.0 meets most known election requirements
• Already used by a number of organizations & jurisdictions
– California & Australia media feeds, etc.
– ES&S, Hart-Intercivic (EDX XML variant), EDS, IBM, more in Europe
• For more info, see http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/
tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=election#expository
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What are primary objections, barriers,
and counter-arguments to use of EML?
• Too new ?
– development of multiple versions since 2001
– used successfully in growing number of jurisdictions
• Competing approaches & standards ?
– IEEE Voting Systems Electronic Data Interchange Project 1622
• temporarily deactivated because TC "failed to achieve balance"
– Comma-delimited spreadsheet format
• No schema to enforce data input requirements
• Require multiple tables to supported nested repeating groups
• Would have to develop table and column definitions, etc.
• Too complex and/or missing features ?
– can ignore modules that are not applicable
– Easy to extend and add new features using XML (e.g. audit reports)
• Implementation costs ?
– 3 major vendors already use EML or XML in significant ways
– Lots of tools to support XML development and use
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The need is urgent…Now is the time to act
• Election auditing requires a single standard set of formats
– statement from last week’s meeting on election auditing at ASA
• States are beginning to implement electronic reporting
– California 6 county experiment & plans to expand to statewide
– Illinois plans statewide integrated voting & elections system
• Need for national archive of election data
– for policy makers, legislators, academic researchers
– current election day survey data is inadequate
• not timely, detailed data not easily available in standard formats
• EAC data collection grant project results can provide insights
• If EML is deficient, we can propose revisions for v6
– but should do so in the next couple of months
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Opportunities for participation
• Election Data Standards Email list (& google sites wiki)
– [email protected]
• Try new election data software & help improve it
– Auditing software from CO (McBurnett), UC Berkeley (Stark), …
– VTS translation software from IL?
• EML & enhancements for version 6
– OASIS Elections & Voter Services Technical Committee
– Joe Hall, David Webber, others
– www.oasis-open.org/committees/election/
• NIST, TGDC, VVSG
– Urge EAC and/or NIST to become active members of OASIS TC
– create documentation & guidelines to facilitate adoption
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Thanks to ….
• Verified Voting Foundation & President Pam Smith
• Election Data Standards and Auditing Lists
• American Statistical Association & Steve Pierson
• David Webber, OVS/OASIS
• John Sebes, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation
• Neal McBurnett, Boulder, Colorado
• Scott Hilkert & Catalyst Consulting associates, Chicago
• participants in last week’s election auditing meeting
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Example XML data fragment
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
- <election type="GE" name="General Election" date="11/4/2008">
- <state id="IL" name="Illinois">
- <jurisdiction id="2402" name="Alexander County" federalId="1700300000">
- <contest id="4" name="12TH CONGRESS" polling="3167" absentee="0" early="487" grace="0" provisional="0" total="3654">
<specialCount type="blankVotes" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
- <specialCount type="underVotes" polling="283" absentee="0" early="88" grace="0" provisional="0" total="371">
<precinct name="CAIRO 1" polling="57" absentee="0" early="14" grace="0" provisional="0" total="71" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 2" polling="37" absentee="0" early="21" grace="0" provisional="0" total="58" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 3" polling="16" absentee="0" early="14" grace="0" provisional="0" total="30" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 4" polling="22" absentee="0" early="14" grace="0" provisional="0" total="36" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 5" polling="19" absentee="0" early="9" grace="0" provisional="0" total="28" />
<precinct name="CACHE" polling="9" absentee="0" early="5" grace="0" provisional="0" total="14" />
<precinct name="SANDUSKY" polling="7" absentee="0" early="2" grace="0" provisional="0" total="9" />
<precinct name="TAMMS" polling="39" absentee="0" early="1" grace="0" provisional="0" total="40" />
<precinct name="MCCLURE" polling="29" absentee="0" early="2" grace="0" provisional="0" total="31" />
<precinct name="THEBES" polling="19" absentee="0" early="1" grace="0" provisional="0" total="20" />
<precinct name="OLIVE BRANCH" polling="29" absentee="0" early="5" grace="0" provisional="0" total="34" />
</specialCount>
- <specialCount type="overVotes" polling="5" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="5">
<precinct name="CAIRO 1" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 2" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 3" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 4" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 5" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="CACHE" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="SANDUSKY" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="TAMMS" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="MCCLURE" polling="3" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="3" />
<precinct name="THEBES" polling="0" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="0" />
<precinct name="OLIVE BRANCH" polling="2" absentee="0" early="0" grace="0" provisional="0" total="2" />
</specialCount>
- <choice id="18" name="JERRY F. COSTELLO" party="DEM" polling="2330" absentee="0" early="411" grace="0" provisional="0" total="2741">
<precinct name="CAIRO 1" polling="162" absentee="0" early="55" grace="0" provisional="0" total="217" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 2" polling="197" absentee="0" early="63" grace="0" provisional="0" total="260" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 3" polling="101" absentee="0" early="26" grace="0" provisional="0" total="127" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 4" polling="189" absentee="0" early="52" grace="0" provisional="0" total="241" />
<precinct name="CAIRO 5" polling="207" absentee="0" early="49" grace="0" provisional="0" total="256" />
<precinct name="CACHE" polling="137" absentee="0" early="25" grace="0" provisional="0" total="162" />
<precinct name="SANDUSKY" polling="120" absentee="0" early="18" grace="0" provisional="0" total="138" />
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John L. name="TAMMS"
McCarthy Election Data
Standards Requirements
– October
2009 NIST Workshop
<precinct
polling="392"
absentee="0"
early="26"
grace="0" provisional="0" total="418" />
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