Ballot counting - bridging between EML 410 and EML 230

["David RR Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

Team,

 

I'm working on an anonymous counting mechanism for use with paper scanned ballots particularly - but the same could also apply to DRE votes too.

 

When the ballot comes off the scanner - the scanner is just plucking fields and columns and X's - so it has no idea of candidates / ballots et al.

 

That is a good thing.

 

So it merely dumps data as <fieldID="XXX" value="1"/> where XXX is the sequential # of the field it scanned.

 

Now I want to align fieldID=023 with candidate 007 - etc, but I want to do this anonymously - like putting beans in tins - so the counting mechanism has no idea which tin is what.

 

Unfortunately EML 230 exposes the candidate affliation, description, etc.

 

What I need is a bridging EML that maps between the actual ballot layout - EML 410 and the list of voting candidates / options - anonymously - (that will create EML 440's then from this and the scanner output).

 

I can of course go ahead and create some XML for this purpose - fieldID = candidateID and that is all that is in that EML - excepting header information on the event etc for matching purposes.

 

I'm just wondering if I'm missing something that exists already? 

 

If not - should we add this to EML 5.0 requirements?

 

The goal is to create a general purpose counting system that can total EML ballots given the EML control XML's - EML 110 - and this other EML XML - and then this runs thru and does all the totals by anonymous ID value.

 

A final step then separately and independently uses the final counts, and the EML 230 to figure out who got what votes.

 

Thanks, DW