EML V7 BALLOT COMMENT

Neal

Just seen your comment in the ballot and noted that you made the same point in the NIST workshop. The answer to your concern is that in v7 we have consolidated the ballot status; before we had two indicators which lacked clarity. See the following extract from the Specification document. Undervotes and Overvotes would now be recorded as ReasonCodes.

“Each contest indicates its identifier, and optionally the counting system and the maximum number of votes that each voter could cast. The key information is that about the votes cast for each of the choices available and the numbers of abstentions and rejected and uncounted votes. If a vote is rejected, for example, because a voter has chosen to spoil a ballot paper, many authorities will want to count that vote as having been cast. The UncountedVotes element is reserved for those cases where that record is not required, for example when the result is thought to be fraudulent. Both the UncountedVotes and RejectedVotes elements have Reason (optional) and ReasonCode (mandatory) attributes to indicate why the votes were treated as they have been. The former is a textual description, and the latter a code.”

Hope this helps and mitigates your concern?

Regards

John Borras

Chair OASIS E&VS Technical Committee

m. +(0)44 7976 157745

Skype: gov3john

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