VSPR FAQ

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Questions

1. How do I get more information about VSPR?
2. How do I get updates about VSPR?
3. Can I join VSPR?
4. How can I get more involved in VSPR's actual work?
5. How can I get more involved in VSPR governance and decisions?
6. Where does VSPR get money and resources? Is someone or something backing VSPR?
7. What is an example of a possible VSPR rating? Is there a plan for VSPR producing work?
8. Who is in VSPR?
9. Will VSPR make judgments about voting equipment and advise government on what voting technology is effective?
10. What is the Federal and Standards Community Council Group?
11. Will VSPR publish standards? How will VSPR publish its results?
12. What voting technology is VSPR’s focus? Is VSPR only working on U.S. projects? Does VSPR address registration issues or absentee voting?
13. How did this effort come to be?
14. Who are the founding Council Group members of VSPR?
15. Who controls VSPR? How does it make decisions?
16. Where is VSPR located? How do I contact the organization?
17. How does VSPR “fit” with other voting entities I’ve heard of?

Answers

1. How do I get more information about VSPR?
   VSPR aims to make all its defining documents, membership lists, work products, and working discussions readily available at VSPR.org. The Charter defines the rules for VSPR governance and includes a diagram of the overall VSPR structure.
   
   
2. How do I get updates about VSPR?
   The easiest way to keep up to date on major announcements in VSPR is to sign up for the “announce” emailings at: announce at vspr.org. In fact anyone can sign up for any VSPR mailing list or periodically review the list archives.
   
   
3. Can I join VSPR?
   Yes. Anyone can become a member at the entry level, called “at-large”. At-Large members can post to VSPR's general listserv and post to Working Group listservs on a moderated basis. At-Large members are publicly listed on the at-large members page of the VSPR website. Once a member you can become more involved in the technical work of VSPR by participating in VSPR's Working Groups and you can get more involved in the governance of VSPR by applying for membership in one of the VSPR Council Groups.
   
   
4. How can I get more involved in VSPR's actual work?
   All the actual technical work of VSPR is done within the Working Groups. This work is done on a collegial basis under the leadership of Working Group Chairs and in accordance with Working Group Charters developed under the oversight of Area Directors. Although anyone can review the work of a Working Group, only at-large members (on a moderated basis) and Council Group members (on an unmoderated basis) are entitled to post to its list. The “membership” of Working Groups is really ultimately defined by who subscribes to and reads the Working Group listservs and who participates actively in the work.
   
   
5. How can I get more involved in VSPR governance and decisions?
   Those who can be considered qualified members of one of the VSPR stakeholder or expert groups are entitled to membership in a VSPR Council Group: Election Officials and Experts, Advocates and Social Scientists, Technology and Security Experts, and Vendors. Applications are confirmed by vote of the existing members of the relevant Group, and membership in VSPR Council Groups cannot be unreasonably withheld. (There is also an appeal process spelled out in the Charter to handle any disputes regarding membership.)
   
   
   
   Council Group members can ballot on the ratification of standards-track Requests for Review and they can vote on the election of VSPR officers, the admission of new members to their Council Group and major decisions including Charter changes. Council Group members can post to VSPR's general listserv, their specific Council Group listserv and to any Working Group listserv on an unmoderated basis. Council Group members are listed on the respective Council Group page of the VSPR website and biographical background information is also shared
   
   
6. Where does VSPR get money and resources? Is someone or something backing VSPR?
   VSPR members all serve on a volunteer unpaid basis. Some infrastructure, communications assistance and conference planning is provided by the Voting Systems Institute (VSI) acting as secretariat to VSPR. VSI's role with respect ot VSPR is limited to that of a support organization; it is intended to have no influence over the content of VSPR standards. VSI is funded by non-profit foundations and is a joint initiative of the Digital Government Research Center and the Center for Governmental Studies. (The Digital Government Research Center is itself a joint research center of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California and the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University.)
   
   
7. What is an example of a possible VSPR rating? Is there a plan for VSPR producing work?
   VSPR is working alongside other entities in support of the Election Assistance Commission “EAC”. The EAC is required to first report findings regarding voting standards to the U.S. Congress during 2005. This requirement is laid out in the Help America Vote Act of 2002. A reading of the charters of specific VSPR Working Groups will give more information on the specific focus of VSPR work. In general, VSPR is committed to technical, detailed and careful work in producing performance, test and applicability standards for the assessment of voting systems.
   
   
8. Who is in VSPR?
   All Council Group and at-Large members are listed publicly within the Membership section of the VSPR website. VSPR members who sit on the Nominating Committee are listed within the Executive Committee page of the VSPR website. Upon their election, Executive Committee members of VSPR will be listed on this same page. The chairs of the various VSPR Working Groups are listed in the Working Group detail pages within the VSPR website. Various interested parties also visit to the VSPR website and may subscribe to any of the VSPR listservs or who may read any of the VSPR archives periodically.
   
   
9. Will VSPR make judgments about voting equipment and advise government on what voting technology is effective?
   The VSPR is focused on creating assessment criteria and test methods so that specific voting systems may be objectively rated or evaluated by 3rd parties other than VSPR. VSPR will not rate specific voting equipment or systems. In understanding the modules or parts of various kinds of voting equipment, VSPR may create architectures or frameworks to distinguish between different approaches to voting (that is, reviewing broadly the performance of paper-based voting vs. electronic voting for example).
   
   
10. What is the Federal and Standards Community Council Group?
    This is a largely advisory group. Membership in this non-voting Council Group is by recommendation of the Executive Committee (see Charter). As per the Charter, membership cannot be unreasonably withheld. Federal and Standards Community members can post to VSPR's general listserv, the VSPR announce and other administrative lists, they also can post to all Council Group listservs and to any Working Group listserv on an unmoderated basis. Federal and Standards Community Council Group members are publicly listed on the Membership page of the VSPR website and biographical background information is also shared.
    
    
11. Will VSPR publish standards? How will VSPR publish its results?
    VSPR is focused on publishing information which will be helpful to the EAC and state and local election officials in their selection and use of voting systems. VSPR publishes its archival technical documents as Request for Reviews (RFRs) which are always available for public review.
    
    
    
    The VSPR standards-track RFRs -- Test Standards, Performance Standards and Applicability Standards -- cannot be formally published without a vote of the Council Groups according to the VSPR charter. In its Test Standards, VSPR aims to define test procedures which can be used to test voting equipment and systems to determine performance levels in various areas as defined in its Performance Standards. VSPR will also publish Applicability Standards to help election officials determine when to apply VSPR Test and Performance Standards.
    
    
    
    VSPR Working Groups also publish Informational, Experimental and Draft RFRs to record their intermediary progress and to distribute general voting technology information which is of relevance to their work. Work RFRs are also publicly available within the RFR section of the VSPR site.
    
    
    
    VSPR will never evaluate specific commercial voting equipment itself, rather VSPR is dedicated to providing 3rd parties and election officials with test and assessment methods that they can use to independently evaluate voting systems.
    
    
12. What voting technology is VSPR’s focus? Is VSPR only working on U.S. projects? Does VSPR address registration issues or absentee voting?
    VSPR is dedicated to developing assessment criteria and test methods for all the parts of voting systems from registration and authentication, to registering and recording voter intent, to tallying and publishing results. VSPR is studying voting generally although with an eye toward helping the EAC publish advisory standards for use in the U.S. Registration and absentee voting fall within the purview of VSPR since they are parts of voting systems.
    
    
13. How did this effort come to be?
    VSPR is the result of VSPR founding Council members implementing the conceptual framework which was originally described in the article “Evaluation of Voting Systems” published in November’s Communications of the ACM (that is, Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery one of a handful of nationally recognized publications of the large computer science professional associations). The article was published by 11 prominent voting, security and computer science experts.
    
    
14. Who are the founding Council Group members of VSPR?
    There are approximately 50 founding members of VSPR (see Membership for details). The founding members are distributed across the four voting Council groups (Election Officials and Experts, Advocates and Social Scientists, Technology and Security Experts, and Vendors) and the two non-voting groups (Federal and Standards Community members and At-Large members). New members will be voted into membership by the groups according to the Charter (which lays out majority voting rules for admission and states that membership should not unreasonably be withheld).
    
    
15. Who controls VSPR? How does it make decisions?
    VSPR is purely a membership-driven and governed effort. Each Council Group is composed of its members and runs according to the Charter communicating by its email listserv which is publicly available. The Council Groups elect the Executive Committee and the Council Groups elect the Area Directors who create Working Groups and oversee their progress. By virtue of their broad-based membership, Council Groups also have the ability to vote on Working Group standards-track RFRs and thereby to issue VSPR compliant standards (as per the Charter). Working Groups conduct themselves within their charter in a collegial fashion and focus narrowly on the problems and challenges they’ve engaged. Working Group communications are also available for review on public email listservs.
    
    
16. Where is VSPR located? How do I contact the organization?
    There are no offices for VSPR. Each member participates in VSPR on a volunteer basis via email and the VSPR website. Some of the infrastructure of VSPR is supplied on a volunteer basis by various members and some is supplied by the Voting Systems Institute acting as secretariat using grant money from non-profit foundations. For substantive issues around ratings or voting technology contact the appropriate Area or Working Group or each Council Group via its list serv. For website issues, contact webmaster@vspr.org. For administrative issues, including publishing RFRs, meetings and Working Group suppor contact the secretariat at secretariat@vspr.org. For general info. Contact info@vspr.org.
    
    
17. How does VSPR “fit” with other voting entities I’ve heard of?
    There are a handful of technical and voting associations which have historically or are currently working on voting technology standards. These entities include Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (“IEEE”) and the National Association of State Election Directors (“NASED”). There is a large number of advocacy and policy organizations which are interested in the performance of voting equipment in one way or another (from access, to reliability, to security). Many of these organizations have employees who are members of VSPR and their interests are represented through the proceedings of the VSPR Council Group. The overall responsibility for digesting and producing advisory standards for voting rests with the EAC.
    
    

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