Verified Voting Blog: New Standards for Election Data

Examining election results to confirm winners and losers for very close elections can be problematic for contests that span multiple jurisdictions using different equipment and diverse data formats for reporting those results. Such differences have been a significant barrier to conducting post-election risk-limiting audits in time to change preliminary election results if necessary. To address problems caused by incompatible election reporting formats, the IEEE has developed a new standard for election results reporting (1622-2). This standard marks the culmination of over ten years of efforts by many individuals and organizations (including Verified Voting), with crucial technical staff support from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In the recently completed 2014 elections, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office successfully used a draft version of the standard to report and export election results and the Associated Press Election Services used the same draft standard to import Ohio’s election results and incorporate it into their national election reporting for television, radio, and newspaper clients across the country. You are invited to weigh in: to see the proposed reporting standard and submit your comments and suggestions for improvement here.

Verified Voting has been actively working for a number of years to develop and promote adoption of national data standards for to support inter-operability, transparent reporting, and post-election audits comparing hand-eye manual counts of voter-verified records with electronic tabulation results.  In 2008 and 2009, we submitted formal comments on the draft 2007 Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) proposed by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC)’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC). While the draft 2007 VVSG “encourages” adoption of a standard data exchange format to facilitate interoperability between different hardware components, Verified Voting and other groups and experts urged that voting systems be required to input and output data using a common standard format for election data import, export and exchange. As we pointed out, requiring standard data exchange formats can also help facilitate another important VVSG goal — interoperability of election hardware and software components from different vendors. 

National: Fighting red maps in purple states | Politico

Based on the big elections in Virginia in recent years, the Old Dominion is turning reliably blue: victories by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, two Senate wins by Democrats in two years, and Terry McAuliffe’s triumph in between. So how is it that Republicans have a stranglehold on the state’s congressional delegation, holding eight seats to Democrats’ three? That question is at the heart of a legal battle over whether Republicans have improperly leveraged their power over the redistricting process. The outcome could have far-reaching implications because the contours of congressional districts drawn by Republican-controlled legislatures are seen as a driving reason why Democrats may be locked in the House minority until at least after the next census in 2020. In Virginia, Democrats are hoping to redraw the lines to make some GOP districts more competitive after a panel of federal judges ruled recently that the Republican-led Legislature’s decision to pack African-American voters into the 3rd Congressional District, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, was motivated purely by race — a violation of the 14th Amendment. Other battleground states such as North Carolina and Florida also have redistricting battles pending.

Kansas: Dumping judges at the polls emerges as a high-stakes political drama | The Kansas City Star

Kansas voters this year came close to doing something they never have before: booting a state Supreme Court justice off the bench. Justices Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson ultimately kept their jobs in an unusually high-profile retention election, the kind that ordinarily tends to draw scant attention at the bottom of the ballot. Yet judges usually win elections deciding whether they should remain on the bench — and by margins often ranging upward of 70 percent. This year, Rosen and Johnson only received 53 percent of the vote, the least support for a Kansas Supreme Court justice in a retention election. The election marked a new era in Kansas where judicial retention elections could become high-stakes political battles, similar to what’s already happening across the country — and where millions are poured into judicial races.

Missouri: Race and Voting Rights in Ferguson | New York Times

For most people, Ferguson, Mo., will be remembered for one awful August afternoon, when a white police officer there shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown. But that incident was only a snapshot in the town’s long and complicated racial history — a history characterized by entrenched segregation and economic inequality, as well as by familiar and systemic obstacles that have kept black residents from holding positions of political power. Ferguson’s population is two-thirds African-American, and yet its mayor, city manager and five of its six City Council members are white. So are its police chief and all but three officers on its 53-member police force. The school board for the Ferguson-Florissant School District is much the same: More than three-quarters of the district’s 12,000 students are black, but the seven-member board includes only one African-American.

North Dakota: GOP rep’s bill would prevent governor from filling congressional seats | The Dickinson Press

A Republican state lawmaker says a rumored possible run for governor by U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in 2016 “was on my mind” when he drafted a bill that would require a special election to fill a vacant congressional seat instead of allowing the governor to appoint a replacement. State Rep. Roscoe Streyle of Minot said he plans to introduce a bill when the Legislature reconvenes next week that would require the governor to call a special election within 60 days to fill a sudden opening in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. “The people should decide who their representative is, not the governor,” he said. Streyle said he has “absolutely no idea” if Heitkamp is mulling a run for governor, but added that “everybody’s talking about it” because nobody knows if Gov. Jack Dalrymple will seek a second term in office. “It was on my mind when I put it together just because it’s a possibility, but I think it’s more of a total holistic policy as opposed to a single piece of legislation against her,” he said.

South Dakota: DOJ asks judge to not dismiss voting rights suit | Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge in South Dakota to not dismiss a lawsuit that tribal members filed against Jackson County in which they claim the county doesn’t give equal voting access to Native American voters. After the November election, the county’s attorneys filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier in Sioux Falls to toss the case arguing that the lawsuit does not contain proof that the county disenfranchised Native Americans — a protected class under the Voting Rights Act. But the federal agency believes the complaint shows otherwise.

Wisconsin: Republicans eye rewrite of campaign finance laws, other election changes | Wisconsin State Journal

Republicans, in firm control of state government when they take office Monday, are poised to make the most sweeping revisions to state campaign finance law in decades. Many of those changes are already in effect after a series of federal court decisions made many current laws unenforceable. But a more comprehensive rewrite is in the works, and the overhaul is getting a thumbs up from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board — a frequent target of GOP ire that is itself in line for a possible makeover. Among other things, lawmakers are considering increasing campaign contribution limits and clarifying the coordination restrictions at the heart of a recent John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s recall campaign. Also on tap: changes to election procedures, including banning all cameras from polling places and testing poll workers on their knowledge of election law. Those changes would come on the heels of a slew of changes adopted last session, including a controversial voter ID law that the U.S. Supreme Court could take up this year.

Greece: Samaras Warns of Euro Exit Risk as Greek Campaign Starts | Bloomberg

Greece’s political parties embarked on a flash campaign for elections in less than three weeks that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said will determine the fate of the country’s membership in the euro currency area. Samaras used a Jan. 2 speech to warn that victory for the main opposition Syriza party would cause default and Greece’s exit from the 19-member euro region, while Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said his party would end German-led austerity. Der Spiegel magazine reported Chancellor Angela Merkel is ready to accept a Greek exit, a development Berlin sees as inevitable and manageable if Syriza wins, as polls suggest. The high-stakes run-up to the Jan. 25 vote returns Greece to the center of European policy makers’ attention as they strive to fend off a return of the debt crisis that wracked the region from late 2009, forcing international financial support for five EU countries.

Israel: Allegations of errors in results of Likud primaries | i24news

Prominent Likud lawmaker launches appeal even as Netanyahu is due to present his list of Knesset contenders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to present his Likud party’s list of contenders for the March elections on Monday, amid allegations that the final tallies of last week’s party primaries were erroneous. A recount of the votes from 15 polling stations, the results of which were published Sunday, did, indeed, find mistakes, but party officials said they were marginal and did not affect the overall outcome. However, Knesset Member Tzipi Hotovely, one of only three women contending for Likud seats in the next Knesset, discounted the recount results and warned that she may go to court to demand a wider recount.

Philippines: Smartmatic bags P1.2-B contract with Comelec | ABS-CBN News

Voting 5-2, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has decided to tap Smartmatic Total Information Management Corp. to refurbish the 80,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to be used in the May 2016 presidential polls. With this development, the poll body will no longer bid out a contract for the repair of the voting machines. “The Comelec en banc has opted to give the project to Smartmatic, with 5-2 votes before the Christmas break. So there will no longer be a public bidding on this,” a Comelec source said over the weekend. Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes along with Commissioners Lucenito Tagle, Elias Yusoph, Christian Robert Lim and Al Parreño voted to extend the warranty of the PCOS machines with Smartmatic. Those who opposed the proposal were Commissioners Luie Guia and Arthur Lim.

Sri Lanka: International observers fear voter intimidation before election | Daily Mail

International observers said Sunday they had received complaints of voter intimidation before this week’s Sri Lankan presidential election, in which the incumbent faces a tough battle to win an unprecedented third term. The 55-member panel of monitors told reporters they had already received complaints that the military had set up 400 roadblocks to discourage minority Tamils from voting freely in former war zones. “According to the opposition these roadblocks are to keep away the voters… (but) we are told (by the authorities) that the military has no role to play in these election,” said the monitoring team leader S. Y. Quraishi. “We are yet to see that.” He said international observers would Monday begin fanning out to the 22 electoral districts across the island to check out the final rallies.