We propose that the CoE standards document can be restructured as a first step towards rooting-out the faults described above.
The committee began by classifying their standards according to the particular rights they aim to uphold: Universal, Equal, Free, Secret and Direct suffrage.2 They could have taken this classification further, however, and divided all the standards according to those categories.
This approach has several advantages. First, the five rights have been developed over a long period of history to capture all the high-level requirements of fair elections; by structuring lower-lever requirements according to these categories we enhance our ability to cover all requirements. Second, if lower-level requirements are grouped together in a simple, logical and systematic manner, we reduce the risk of inconsistency and redundancy. This conclusion is supported by the fact that restructuring the document helped uncover inconsistencies, redundancies and gaps in the requirements. Third, a well-structured document is easier to understand, to maintain, and to use.
The one requirement that we were unable to fit into any of these categories was the need for the electorate to trust the system. An election must not only be fair, but also seen to be fair. We have placed this requirement last, since the trustworthiness of the system is more important than the trustedness. In fact the latter is undesirable in the absence of the former.
Terms used below have the following meanings:
ballot - voting options available in a particular race/referendum/poll
cast - to commit to a particular set of preferences, equivalent to putting
one's completed paper ballot into the ballot box in a traditional paper-based voting system
eligible voter - a person who is entitled to cast one or more votes
e-voting system - any voting system which makes use of an electronic device
polling period - period of time when polls are open, ie votes can be cast
vote (noun only) - the expression of an individual voter's preferences
voter - a person in their role as caster of a vote
voter register - list of eligible voters
voting channel - communication channel by which votes can be cast
voting system - a system (set of devices and methods) for the collection and tabulation of votes
In the text below, italicised numbers in parentheses refer to standards in the CoE standards document [7]. Where a standard in the original document was deemed to cover more than one concept, it was split into sub-standards (see section 6.1); these are referred to by letters (eg (61b)), with the division taken along natural lines.