EAC Standards Board Meeting—Day One
from: on
Feb 24, 2011
Hello from Oklahoma City! The EAC Standards Board – made up of election officials from every state and U.S. territory – is meeting here Feb. 24 and 25. This morning's big topic was Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products and how they impact the quality and functionality of voting systems. What does COTS have to do with elections? Examples of COTS components are laptops, touch screens, and flash memory devices, which are used in elections throughout the nation. EAC staff and election officials discussed the pros and cons of COTS and its effect on the life cycle of voting systems. Potential next steps include a COTS Wiki, development of classification schemes for COTS products and issuance of COTS best practices. For more information, watch the webcast of EAC’s recent COTS roundtable.
This afternoon we discussed cost savings in elections. Election officials from D.C., Georgia, Minnesota and Texas shared cost savings initiatives, including:
• Use of technology to reduce phone calls, emails
• Web sites that feature pertinent, frequently requested info & tools like polling place locators
• Online look-ups for voter registration status & absentee ballots status
• Document management systems for ballots to reduce shipping costs
• Webcast trainings
Visit the Standards Board meeting page to view all the day’s presentations, including COTS and cost savings in elections. Tomorrow we’ll discuss military and overseas voting and delivering accurate election information to the public. More to come…
Back to Blog List