Contents
| Last modified: August 18, 2008 |
| Election Markup Language (EML) |
Overview
In January 2008, OASIS announced that the membership had approved the Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0 as an OASIS Standard. EML defines a set of data and message definitions described as a set of XML schemas and covering a wide range of transactions that occur during an election. EML is meant to assist and enable the election process and does not require any changes to traditional methods of conducting elections. The extensibility of EML makes it possible to adjust to various e-democracy processes without affecting the process, as it simply enables the exchange of data between the various election processes in a standardized way.
- Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0: Process and Data Requirements [archive PDF]
- Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0: Schema Descriptions [archive PDF]
- Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0: Data Dictionary [archive XLS]
- EML Version 5.0 Schemas
- EML v5.0 OASIS Standard - ZIP Archive, with file listing
In November 2007, OASIS announced that the Election and Voter Services Technical Committee had submitted the "Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0" specification as an approved (CS 01) Committee Specification for consideration as an OASIS Standard. A membership vote on the specification was scheduled for November 16, 2007 through November 30, 2007. Statements of use were submitted by IBM, EDS, and and Opt2Vote. Institutional representatives from Accenture, Boynings Consulting Ltd, EDS, Election Systems & Software, IBM, Opt2Vote Ltd, Oracle, Secstan, and University of California (Berkeley) were listed as members of the Technical Committee.
In August 2007, OASIS announced that the Election and Voter Services Technical Committee had approved an EML Committee Draft specification for public review: Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0 includes a Process and Data Requirements document, Schema Descriptions, EML Data Dictionary, and XML Schemas.
OASIS announced approval of the Election Markup Language (EML) version 4.0 as an OASIS Standard on February 13, 2006. "EML is designed to benefit public officials who oversee voting in local or national elections and referendums, as well as those who conduct private elections within corporations or other organizations. The EML specification was developed by the TC following work over several years by key representatives from IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and other suppliers in collaboration with international government agencies across many countries. EML provides a high-level overview of the processes within an electronic voting system and XML schemas for the various data interchange points between the e-voting processes. It describes the data requirements of the flows between electronic voting processes and addresses security issues relating to the exchange of data."
The OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee was chartered in May 2001 to "develop a standard for the structured interchange of data among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organizations. The services performed for such elections include but are not limited to voter role/membership maintenance (new voter registration, membership and dues collection, change of address tracking, etc.), citizen/membership credentialing, redistricting, requests for absentee/expatriate ballots, election calendaring, logistics management (polling place management), election notification, ballot delivery and tabulation, election results reporting and demographics."
As of October 2004, the Election and Voter Services TC had produced four major versions of the Election Markup Language (EML), incrementally enhancing the specification to meet the requirements for global applicability as determined by feedback from pilot projects in several countries. EML Version 3 and Version 4 have been edited by the eGovernment Unit, Cabinet Office, UK under the direction of TC Chair John Borras (Director of Technology Policy in the e-Government Unit, UK Cabinet Office).
The design goals for the EML standard are that it be:
- Multinational: to have the specifications adopted as global standards
- Flexible: effective across the different voting regimes (e.g., proportional representation or 'first past the post') and voting channels (e.g., Internet, SMS, postal or traditional paper ballot)
- Multilingual: flexible enough to accommodate the various languages and dialects and vocabularies
- Adaptable: resilient so as to support elections in both the private and public sectors
- Secure: able to secure the relevant data and interfaces from any attempt at corruption, as appropriate to the different requirements of varying election rules
On January 24, 2005 the final Version 4.0 Committee Drafts for versions of EML Process and Data Requirements and EML Schema Descriptions were released, according to the announcement by Ms Farah Ahmed. The Requirements document "describes the background and purpose of the Election Markup Language, the electoral processes from which it derives its structure and the security and audit mechanisms it is designed to support." The Schemas document "provides an explanation of the core schemas used throughout, definitions of the simple and complex datatypes, plus the EML schemas themselves. It also covers the conventions used in the specification and the use of namespaces, as well as the guidance on the constraints, extendibility, and splitting of messages." See the bibliographic records.
[October 2004] A version 4 Election Markup Language Working Draft was finalized in September 2004, distributed in a ZIP archive with prose specifications and thirty-eight (38) XML Schema files. The EML Version 4 EML Process and Data Requirements document "describes the background and purpose of the Election Markup Language, the electoral processes from which it derives its structure and the security and audit mechanisms it is designed to support." A Version 4 EML Schema Descriptions document "provides an explanation of the core schemas used throughout, definitions of the simple and complex datatypes, plus the EML schemas themselves. It also covers the conventions used in the specification and the use of namespaces, as well as the guidance on the constraints, extendibility, and splitting of messages." The corresponding Data Dictionary in spreadsheet format provides for each Date Element Name a definition, a formal type, and indication of the XML Schema(s) in which the element is present. Some 223 Data Element Names are documented.
[May 01, 2002] OASIS Election and Voter Services TC Releases e-Voting Process and Data Requirements Specification. A Committee Specification for TC approval has been released for public review by the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee. Under the title Election Markup Language (EML): e-Voting Process and Data Requirements, this document constitutes one of several early TC deliverables being used in pilot studies designed to test the effectiveness of the prototype EML standard across a number of different international jurisdictions. It represents a "general and global study of the electoral process, introducing the transition from a complete human process by defining the data structure to be exchanged and where needed; an EML schema is introduced and clearly marked." The supporting schemas package also under vote as part of the TC release includes thirty-nine (39) XML schemas and a reference document Election Markup Language (EML): XML Schemas. The TC has been chartered to "develop a standard for the structured interchange of data among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organizations. The services performed for such elections include but are not limited to voter role/membership maintenance (new voter registration, membership and dues collection, change of address tracking, etc.), citizen/membership credentialing, redistricting, requests for absentee/expatriate ballots, election calendaring, logistics management (polling place management), election notification, ballot delivery and tabulation, election results reporting and demographics."
From the OASIS TC proposal:
Need: This [proposed] standard will facilitate interoperability among various suppliers of election hardware, software, and services. It is recognized that there are many players in the field employing different levels of automation. Those functional areas not automated can be more easily automated if a common way of doing business existed. The functional areas that are automated operate on many different platforms employing different architectures, some of which have never done data interchange, especially with unlike environments. The need to have a consistent, auditable, automated election system has been evidenced in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election and this need is also pervasive worldwide, especially in developing democracies. New global election processes are being developed, and voting procedures and voting cultures must be incorporated into these processes. There must be a uniform way to allow existing systems to interact with other systems as these new processes evolve and are adopted.
Solution: The solution is to create a standard based on XML that will provide all the intercommunication needs for this industry. XML is an excellent choice for several reasons. XML is sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international standards body supported by many of the major hardware and software vendors. XML is an emerging standard based on a mature standard, SGML. SGML has given rise to HTML, a widely used and understood Internet technology. XML is text based, which means that a vast number of devices and software components can use it. XML encourages groups and industries to form common interchange standards using easy-to- understand tools. Lastly XML is flexible and allows for modifications to be proposed and made during the course of time. This will allow the industry to evolve separately from the technology. Election needs will drive the evolutionary process and not be a result of the technology employed.
Principal References
- Election and Voter Services Technical Committee (OASIS TC)
- Election and Voter Services (EVS) TC Charter
- Election Markup Language (EML) FAQ document
- Contact: Mr John Borras (TC Chair; e-Government Unit, UK Cabinet Office)
- "Election and Voter Services Committee: Project Overview." [source]
- Mailing list archive for 'election-services'
- EVS TC Comment List Archive
- EML-DEV Discussion List Archive
- See also: "XML and Voting (Ballots, Elections, Polls)" - Main reference page. (not maintained)
OASIS Election and Voter Services TC Deliverables
EML Version 5.0 (CS 01) Candidate for Approval as OASIS Standard. See bibliographic details for the EML v5.0 four-part specification below.
- EML Process & Data Requirements Version 4.0 OASIS Standard. February 01, 2006. 48 pages.
- EML Schema Descriptions
- EML Data Dictionary
- See the ZIP archive and file listing [source]
EML Version 4 Committee Draft, Final version:
- EML Process and Data Requirements. Version 4.0. 24-January-2005. 48 pages. Document identifier: 'EML v4.0 Process and Data Requirements'. Schemas are included in the ZIP archive. Editor: eGovernment Unit, Cabinet Office, UK. Contributors: John Ross, Paul Spencer, John Borras, Farah Ahmed. Abstract: "This document describes the background and purpose of the Election Markup Language, the electoral processes from which it derives its structure and the security and audit mechanisms it is designed to support. The relating document entitled EML v4.0 Schema Descriptions' lists the schemas and schema descriptions to be used in conjunction with this specification." From ZIP archive; see the file listing. See the announcement by Ms Farah Ahmed. [source ZIP]
- EML Schema Descriptions. Version 4.0. 24-January-2005. 94 pages. Document identifier: EML v4.0 Schema Descriptions. Editor: eGovernment Unit, Cabinet Office, UK. Contributors: John Ross, Paul Spencer, John Borras, Farah Ahmed. Abstract: "This document contains the descriptions of the schemas used in EML v4.0. "This document provides an explanation of the core schemas used throughout, definitions of the simple and complex datatypes, plus the EML schemas themselves. It also covers the conventions used in the specification and the use of namespaces, as well as the guidance on the constraints, extendibility, and splitting of messages."
EML Version 4 Draft (September 2004):
- "EML Process and Data Requirements." Version 4.0d [Committee Working Draft]. Editor: eGovernment Unit, Cabinet Office, UK. Contributors: John Ross, Paul Spencer, John Borras, and Farah Ahmed. From the ZIP archive. Posted by John Borras on 06-September-2004 as 'EML v4.0d 2004-09-03.zip'. 03-September-2004. Document identifier: 'EML v4.0d Process and Data Requirements'. 48 pages. "This document describes the background and purpose of the Election Markup Language, the electoral processes from which it derives its structure and the security and audit mechanisms it is designed to support. The relating document entitled EML v4.0d Schema Descriptions' lists the schemas and schema descriptions to be used in conjunction with this specification." See the file listing for contents of the ZIP distribution file.
- "EML Schema Descriptions." Editor: eGovernment Unit, Cabinet Office, UK. Contributors: John Ross, Paul Spencer, John Borras, and Farah Ahmed. Version 4.0d [Committee Working Draft]. 03-September-2004. Document identifier: 'EML v4.0d Schema Descriptions'. 97 pages. "This document contains the descriptions of the schemas used in EML v4.0d. This document provides an explanation of the core schemas used throughout, definitions of the simple and complex datatypes, plus the EML schemas themselves. It also covers the conventions used in the specification and the use of namespaces, as well as the guidance on the constraints, extendibility, and splitting of messages.
- Data dictionary for EML v4.0d. Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
"Benefits of the Election Markup Language (EML)." By Paul Spencer. 5-October-2004.
"Election Markup Language." Version 3.0. 24-February-2003. Editor: Office of the e-Envoy, UK. Contributors: John Ross, Paul Spencer, and Charbel Aoun. Document identifier: 'EML v3.0' 81 pages. Version 3 was balloted and approved as an OASIS Committee Specification. "This document contains a high-level overview of the processes within an e-voting system and the data requirements of the flows between those processes. It also addresses security issues relating to the exchange of data, and also provides a glossary of terms to ensure a full understanding by readers of the document. The approved schemes and schema descriptions are also provided." See the file listing for contents of the ZIP distribution. PDF generated from the .DOC extracted from the ZIP archive. [source .ZIP]
Election Mark-Up Language (EML): e-Voting Process and Data Requirements. Version 2. 5-September-2002. 67 pages. OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee. The primary deliverable of the committee 'The Election Markup Language (EML)' is a set of data and message definitions described as XML schemas. At present EML includes specifications for: (1) Candidate Nomination, Response to Nomination and Approved Candidate Lists; (2) Voter Registration information, including eligible voter lists; (3) Various communications between voters and election officials, such polling information, election notices, etc; (4) Logical Ballot information (races, contests, candidates, etc.); (5) Voter Authentication; (6) Vote Casting and Vote Confirmation; (7) Election counts and results; (8) Audit information pertinent to some of the other defined data and interfaces." [ZIP archive with schemas]
Election Markup Language (EML): e-Voting Process and Data Requirements. Version April 29, 2002. [source .DOC] See also:
- Election Markup Language (EML): XML Schemas. Version April 29, 2002. [source .DOC]
- EML v1 schemas package
- List of EML v1 XML schemas
News, Papers, Articles, Early Draft Deliverables
[January 24, 2008] "Members Approve Election Markup Language 5.0 as OASIS Standard. EDS, IBM, Oracle, and Others Collaborate on Secure, Global Standard for Exchanging Information Between Voting Systems, Software, and Services." — "OASIS announced that its members have approved the Election Markup Language (EML) version 5.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Developed through an open process by the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee, EML supports information exchange through the complete election process, including candidate nomination, voter registration and authentication, ballot information, vote casting and confirmation, tabulation, auditing, and more. EML is flexible enough to be used for elections and referendums that are fully e-enabled as well as ones that are primarily paper-based. Designed to accommodate many languages, dialects, and vocabularies, the standard also supports various voting regimes. It can be used in both the private and public sectors. The value of EML is recognized by many public sector agencies. The Council of Europe has issued a recommendation that its 46 member states use open standards such as EML for e-election and e-referendum applications. All U.K. electoral modernisation pilots have used EML, as a means to evaluate the standard's effectiveness in real elections; feedback from these pilots was incorporated into version 5.0. The U.S. State of California intends to use EML to provide election results in its upcoming presidential primary. The OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee continues work on developing profiles and implementation guidelines for use of EML 5.0. Participation in the Committee remains open to all government agencies, companies, non-profit groups, academic institutions, and individuals. Archives of the work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS offers a mechanism for public comment..."
[November 05, 2007] Report on the Election Markup Language (EML) Interoperability Demonstration held 29/30 October 2007 in Ditton Manor UK. A document posted by Mr. John Borras. See also the Powerpoint slide presentation in the ZIP package provided by Patrick Gannon, and the results document. Summary: "All attendees of the OASIS Open Standards Forum 2007 held in Ditton Manor UK were invited to participate in an Interoperability Demonstration of the Election Markup Language (EML) OASIS Standard. With their help the objective of the Demo was to show how EML can be used in a multi-channel e-voting ballot involving several suppliers... In conducting the Demo, EML's schemas 330, 410, 510 and 520 were used and examples of these are shown at Appendix C. All personal data has been removed from these examples for obvious reasons. The 330 schema was created from the Forum delegate list and sent to all channel providers. They prepared their vote casting systems from this schema and added appropriate validation routines to counter duplicate and erroneous voting. At the conclusion of voting each channel provider constructed a 510 schema with the number of votes and sent it to IBM, who reconciled and counted the votes. The results were then posted to a remote website using a 520 schema. This whole exercise was a very global event as data was being captured by back-end systems in Nova Scotia, Australia, Northern Ireland, as well as locally in Ditton Manor. The paper ballots were scanned locally. All the data was sent electronically to Belgium for counting and then posted to the remote website for use in the final presentation at the Forum..." [source PDF, ZIP with .odp, .pdf, .ppt]
[November 02, 2007] In November 2007, OASIS Staff announced that the Election and Voter Services Technical Committee has submitted the "Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0" specification as an approved (CS 01) Committee Specification for consideration as an OASIS Standard. A membership vote on the specification is scheduled for November 16, 2007 through November 30, 2007. Institutional representatives from Accenture, Boynings Consulting Ltd, EDS, Election Systems & Software, IBM, Opt2Vote Ltd, Oracle, Secstan, and University of California (Berkeley) are members of the Technical Committee [2007-11].
The TC was chartered in 2001 to develop standards for election and voter services information using XML. Specifically: to "develop a standard for the structured interchange among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organizations [which is] multinational (global acceptance), flexible (effective across different voting regimes and voting channels), multilingual, adaptable (support elections in private and public sectors), and secure.
The EML v5.0 four-part specification includes:
- Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0 Process and Data Requirements, edited by John Borras; it describes the background and purpose of the Election Markup Language, the electoral processes from which it derives its structure and the security and audit mechanisms it is designed to support
- EML Version 5.0 Data Dictionary; it defines the data used in the processes and required to be handled by the XML schemas, providing in tabular format information for each Data Element Name the EML schema type, list of schemas in which the data element ocurs, and W3C XML Schema (xs:) type
- Election Markup Language (EML) Version 5.0 Schema Descriptions; it provides an explanation of the core schemas used throughout, definitions of the simple and complex datatypes, plus the EML schemas themselves and also covers the conventions used in the specification and the use of namespaces, as well as the guidance on the constraints, extendibility, and splitting of messages
- EML Version 5.0 XML schemas, contained in some 42 separate XSD files, also available in ZIP format [source]
"EML has been developed as a standard for the structured interchange of data among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organisations. The objective has been to introduce a uniform and reliable way to allow systems involved in the election process to interoperate. Members of the TC have been liaising very closely with the IEEE Voting System Electronic Data Interchange Project 1622, and their draft specification is seen as a compatible subset and USA localisation of EML... EML is designed to be flexible for use in elections and referendums that are primarily paper-based or that are fully e-enabled."
EML includes specifications for:
- Candidate Nomination, Response to Nomination and Approved Candidate Lists
- Referendum Options Nomination, Response to Nomination and Approved Options Lists
- Voter Registration information, including eligible voter lists
- Various communications between voters and election officials, such as polling information, election notices
- Ballot information — races, contests, candidates
- Voter Authentication
- Vote Casting and Vote Confirmation
- Election counts and results
- Audit information pertinent to some of the other defined data and interfaces
Statements of successful use of the EML 5.0 specification have been provided by IBM, EDS, and Opt2Vote. I.e., a written statement by an OASIS Organizational Member stating that it is successfully using or implementing that specification in accordance with the conformance clauses specified in TC Process Section 2.18, and stating whether its use included the interoperation of multiple independent implementations.
See also: (1) the latest 15-day public review, 2007-08-15 through 2007-08-30 (2) the 2007-09-10 EML v5 Public Review - Disposition of Comments Received from the first 60-day public review, 2007-04-11 through 2007-06-10 [disposition .doc, source]
[April 2007] "Transparent Open Secure e-Voting: Exploring the Paradox." By David Webber. Paper prepared for EVT 2007 — USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology (EVT) Workshop, which is co-located with the the 16th USENIX Security Symposium. Paper posted April 23, 2007 to the TC mailing list of the OASIS Election and Voter Services TC. "Citizens expect the voting process to be open and transparent and at the same time secure. When transferred to the digital domain these requirements set unique challenges for the implementing engineers. Usual software programming best practices and typical optimizations suddenly become significant and unintended security issues. In our approach using the OASIS Election Markup Language (EML), we explore how special care is taken to ensure that the e-Voting process is not inadvertently compromised. Particularly, the design focus taken ensures that the voting machines themselves have an anonymous view of the ballots they are handling and counting. That is, the program processing the ballot has no information about what any selected voter choice means; only the coordinates of the marked boxes is read. In this way, by limiting information from the scanning process, we seek to ensure that traditional concerns over voting attacks based on vote shifting and counting manipulation are ameliorated... The technical methods we have developed are based on the OASIS EML specifications and the use of open source and open standard technologies including XML and XSLT from the W3C. The initial implementation is done using Java technology to ensure open platform deployment on any hardware supporting the Java environment. The focus is on showing how the method and approach work and implementing a reference software solution that can then be purposed for actual election use. To develop a full election system from the prototype will require additional safeguards to be applied at the operating system level to ensure that only required components are present. Similarly, the tailoring of the tools used to process and report the election ballots — most importantly the browser component need to be configured to prevent external tampering..." Canonical source: PDF and .DOC.
[February 01, 2007] "The Case for using Election Markup Language (EML)." Paper prepared by members of the OASIS Election and Voter Services TC. January 31, 2007. 21 pages. "This paper sets out the case for using EML in e-enabled elections and shows the advantages and value that using EML can make to running some or all parts of such elections. It has been primarily written for an audience of election officials, candidates and other decision makers in the voting process. However it will also be of interest to voters to help their understanding of the evolving e-voting environment, and also suppliers of e-voting systems and services who may be required to implement EML in their offerings."
[December 03, 2004] "e-Voting and XML: A Case Study of a UK Government Local Election Pilot." By Simon Bain (CTO, TENdotZERO, Bedford, United Kingdom). "XML is an enabler to e-voting applications. It ensures that these applications conform to a standard that has been laid down by an independent body. Enabling different voting applications to pool disparate information into one recognisable format. In May 2003, 17 UK local government authorities participated in an e-Voting pilot project. Voting is not compulsory in the UK (as it is in some countries). However, voter turnout varies enormously from election to election, and from area to area and is widely considered to be much lower than desirable . Overall there has been a consensus that ways should be examined to increase voter turnout and thereby strengthen the democratic process. The e-Voting Pilots were therefore initiated to examine the effect on voter turnout in local government elections by providing the public with a variety of ways to cast their votes that reflect the existence of new technologies, including: The Internet; Interactive Digital TV (i-DTV); Land line telephone; Mobile telephone; Surface mail, As one of the participating vendors, we present a case study of the Internet and i-DTV voting methods, focusing on the role of XML (Election Markup Language being the approved variant) in this project, and how it contributed to the success of the pilot — ensuring, with only five weeks of development time, a secure, fast, anonymous voting process. The end result was that voter turnout in the pilot areas in which we participated increased by almost 20% over previous elections. This study has been designed to demonstrate how XML can be a significant enabler to e-voting applications. It explains the importance that applications conform to a standard that has been laid down by an independent body. It shows how different voting applications can be manipulated to pool disparate information into one recognisable and extensible format, so that these different applications can communicate with one another. Equally importantly, it facilitates a rich, yet easy to follow user experience across many different voting platforms. The paper illustrates how, harnessed correctly, XML can make e-Voting an effective, secure and democratic method of casting your vote..."
[October 18, 2004] EML Schema Changes from v4.0g to v4.0h. "EML" From the GovTalk Schema Library. Draft Schemas. See also: EML UK Customisation v1.0 (13/10/2002, v 1.0, Agreed Schemas); EML UK CORE (25/8/2004, version 0.4, Draft Schemas); EML UK Customisation v2.1 (5/1/2004, Version 2.1, Agreed Schemas); EML UK Customisation v2.0 (19/12/2003, Version 2.0, Agreed Schemas).
[October 15, 2004] "XML Matters: OASIS Election Markup Language. Standardization of XML formats for Voting and Elections." By David Mertz, Ph.D. (Bean Counter, Gnosis Software, Inc). From IBM developerWorks (October 15, 2004). ['The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) has developed many XML standards in use within government, law, and business. Election Markup Language (EML) is OASIS' foray into the world of elections — with an emphasis on voting within governmental jurisdictions. In this installment, David Mertz gives readers an introductory look at the structure and purpose of EML, with an eye toward how this standard, which is now used largely in Europe, will substantially influence future data standards in the United States.'] "EML is intended to: (2) Be rich enough to accommodate governmental elections across many jurisdiction levels; (2) Allow voting over many channels; (3) Enable many tabulation and voting rules, such as ranked preference and cumulative voting; (4) Handle security, encryption, and authentication requirements; (5) Record and convey information about voter registration, organization membership, and other voter metadata... In Europe, EML is a standard in relatively wide (and growing) usage, and programmers who develop elections systems — or even systems that touch on them peripherally — need to become familiar with EML. Moreover, as an OASIS standard, EML is certainly a specification that organizations should consider in conducting private elections. Bringing a common data format to a large swatch of elections usage will allow for interoperability among tools, including tools dedicated to audit and security analysis of elections..."
[September 20, 2004] "E-voting Systems Must be Based on Open Standards, Says Council of Europe." In eGovernment News 20-September-2004. "A recently finalised draft recommendation by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (COE) stresses the need to ensure that e-voting systems are transparent, auditable and based on open standards. Although it recognises the potential benefits of e-voting, the Council of Europe believes it also carries certain risks. The COE's Committee of Ministers has thus entrusted the 'Multidisciplinary Ad Hoc Group of Specialists on legal, operational and technical standards for e-enabled voting' with the task of developing a set of standards that could be used as a reference by member states considering the introduction of e-voting programmes. The Group recently published its final draft recommendation, which calls for the adoption of over 100 standards, principles and best practices. Overall, the draft recommendation stresses the need to adopt transparent e-voting systems. In order to ensure the integrity of the electoral processes and to gain the trust of citizens, it says that e-voting systems should be based on open standards, have all their components disclosed, allow end-to-end auditing, and be certified by the relevant authorities. In addition to this, the draft recommendation also stresses the need to ensure that voters receive adequate support, including information, training and assistance regarding the e-voting systems used. [Among the Technical requirements]: Open standards shall be used to ensure that the various technical components or services of an e-voting system, possibly derived from a variety of sources, interoperate. In this respect, the Election Markup Language (EML) should be used whenever possible..." [alt URL]
[August 08, 2004] "EML UK CORE." 2004-08-25. "The zipped file contains draft schemas of OASIS Election Mark-up Language (EML) version 4 along with the additional constraints applied to for the use in the UK Co-ordinated Online Register of Electors (CORE) project. The schemas will be of interest to decision-makers in the online registration process and developers of the systems that will implement the CORE standards. The consultation period for these schemas ended on Friday, 8th October, 2004..." See the file listing. [source ZIP, cache]
[May 19, 2004] "Co-Ordinated On-Line Register of Electors (CORE)." "The [ODPM] CORE (Co-ordinated On-line Register of Electors) project is designed to modernise the electoral registration process by introducing standardised electronic electoral registers across the country and subsequently putting in place a national system to provide authorised users on-line access to electoral registration data. CORE will thus provide some of the essential infrastructure to meet the Government's aims for multi-channelled, e-enabled elections at the local, regional, and national levels, culminating in an e-enabled general election sometime after 2006... Phase one of the project will involve: local authorities establishing interoperable and standardised electronic electoral registers; and a feasibility study to identify the precise form national access might take and the means to maintain it. Underpinning this phase is the development for electoral registers of the data messaging format 'Election Mark-up Language' (EML). The suppliers of electoral registration software have been involved with the development of EML and have now agreed to make available electoral registration systems that are EML compliant. This will pave the way for interoperability of electoral registers, enabling all registers to receive and transmit data in a standardised format... In the light of the consultation the Government intends to specify requirements as to EML compliance and data standards with which local authorities would be required to comply by end 2004. The Government also intends to make appropriate grant arrangements in order to support the costs that local authorities would incur in investing in electoral register systems in order to meet the specified requirements. It is expected that the electoral registration software suppliers will be making EML compliant systems available from early 2004 to their clients at no additional cost..."
[January 20, 2004] "e-Voting Standards for UK Elections." By John Borras (Director Technology Policy, Office of the e-Envoy Cabinet Office). 20-January-2004. 26 pages. Discusses UK initiatives and pilots, also OASIS e-Voting Technical Committee, Council of Europe, and CORE project. "E-Voting in the UK: Aim: An e-enabled General Election some time after 2006; Kiosk voting and remote unsupervised voting; Multi-channel: Internet,Telephone, SMS, Digital TV, Polling stations, Post; Pilots testing systems for security and reliability, and building voter confidence..." [cache]
"e-enabled General Election on the cards for 2006+." From Publictechnology.net. January 16, 2004. "A fully e-enabled general election sometime after 2006 took a step closer today with the launch of a new project to revolutionise the electoral registration process. The CORE (Co-ordinated Online Register of Electors) project will make the electoral registration process easier, accurate, secure and cost effective and will benefit voters, local authorities, authorised users and other key stakeholders. This eGovernment project, will be in two phases — the first will standardise local electronic electoral registers across the country and make them fully interoperable regardless of the local system in use. The second phase will allow authorised users to access local registration data centrally and will support a multi-channelled, e-enabled elections. A key technical enabler for the project will be an important new development, EML (Election Markup Language). This is a data messaging format developed with electoral registration software and e-voting database suppliers will be used to allow registers to transfer and receive data. The EML schemas and further information about EML is available on the e-gov website..."
"The Election Markup Language." By Paul Spencer (Boynings Consulting). May 2003. Presented at XML Europe 2003. Full text in PDF format. "The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)Election Markup Language (EML) is described by a set of reference processes and an accompanying set of XML Schemas. These schemas define a set of messages covering five main categories of transaction: (1) voter facing transactions, such as delivery of a ballot "paper" and the ability to cast a vote over the Internet, through text messaging or using other electronic means; (2) candidate transactions, such as the ability to nominate candidates and accept nominations; (3) administrative transactions, such as communicating a list of eligible voters; (4) reporting transactions, such as the ability to report a result; and (5) security-related transactions. The [TC Charter] provides a huge scope, allowing EML to be used for anything from a web site or Short Message Service (SMS) vote for your favourite pop group to highly sophisticated and secure public sector elections..."
[November 05, 2002] UK e-GIF Publishes XML Schemas For Use in Local Elections. XML Schemas for use in local elections have been published as part of the UK e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF). These XML Schemas have undergone public consultation and have been agreed by the Office of the e-Envoy. The Schemas represent a UK adaptation of the EML International Schema developed by the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee. The distribution contains some 33 XML Schema (.xsd) files and an overview document EML: Customisation for UK Local Elections. The specification includes an introduction on (optional) validation of EML-UK document using Schematron schemas.
[June 11, 2001] "Ballot Markup Language (BML) XML DTD." Draft only. Posted by Gregg McGilvray [11 Jun 2001.] Notes: "Here is a first cut for the Ballot Markup Language (BML). There is a sample XML, DTD, and XSL file at the end. The sylesheet ballot.xsl will display a simple ballot in HTML format. If you create separate files for each of them with the proper names you may try to open ballot.xml in an XML compliant browser. I used IE 5.5 to view the results. Please use this as a starting point for discussions about how to start the development and approval of the EML standard. This is not a comprehensive description and will need to be embellished. We will formalize the document as we go along. I used a DTD for this example which is not to imply that DTDs will be used instead of schemas. I also used only elements in favor of attributes which does not necessarily mean it is the best method...The term ITEM is meant to represent the thing voted upon whether it is an office, position-elect or referendum. This is a very generic term and can be replaced if necessary. The term SELECTION refers to the candidate, answer, etc which is the option or choice for election. Each ballot has a unique ID as do the ITEMS and SELECTIONS. The VOTELIMIT defines the number of vacancies to be filled in that particulat ITEM. The UNDERVOTE element indicates whether it is allowable to vote for fewer than the allowable SELECTIONS. The WRITEIN element describes the number of write in candidates allowed. The ITEM_TYPE element describes the type of ITEM (such as first-past-the-post, plurality, proportional vote, etc.) and will need to be discussed further. Each ballot will be enclosed with the tags <ballot>...</ballot>..." See the posting "BML - First cut discussion document".
[July 18, 2001] "XML Group Works On Election Markup Language." By Jim Carr. In MicroTimes Magazine Issue 223 (July 9, 2001). "Can technology save us from election nightmares such as last year's presidential voting debacle? An international group intent on setting a specification for automatically exchanging election information thinks so. OASIS, the Extensible Markup Language (XML) interoperability consortium, has formed a committee to standardize the exchange of election and voter services information using XML, which is an open standard used in the exchange of data on the Internet. The committee will develop what it calls the Election Markup Language (EML), an XML-based specification for the structured exchange of data among hardware, software and service vendors providing public and private ventures with election or voter services...Government elections will be just one of the ways in which EML can be applied, according to the consortium. The OASIS specification will also be applicable to private elections, such as those held by publicly traded corporations, credit and labor unions, pension plans, trade associations and not-for-profit organizations. The OASIS committee's work will cover a variety of election-related functions. These include voter registration, dues collection, change of address tracking, citizen/membership documentation, redistricting, requests for absentee ballots, election calendaring, polling place management, election notification, ballot delivery and tabulation, election results reporting and demographics. The organization's election and voter services technical committee, which OASIS said includes founding sponsors Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting), Microsoft Corp. and Election.com Inc., will manage development of the EML specification..."
AP Election Results DTD. Posted 12-Jun-2001 by Tim Bovee (Director of Projects/Technology, The Associated Press, Washington). Part of the OASIS Election Services TC work. "Here is a first cut of an election results DTD that we've developed in-house... My key concern at this early point is that the fields used to identify an election (Office, Type, State, Party, District/Seat) be consistent both in collecting and reporting votes..." See the posting.
Technical Committee Call for Participation. 2001-03. Initial members of the TC included: gregg@election.comGregg McGilvray of election.com [Chair], Oliver Bell of Microsoft Corp, and Ed McLaughlin of Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting). Contact: Gregg McGilvray (TC Chair), Chief Technical Strategist, election.com, 1001 Franklin Ave, Garden City, New York USA 11530, +1 (516) 248-7493.
Announcement: "OASIS Technical Committee Call for Participation: Election and Voter Services."
[May 08, 2001] "XML Group to Create Specifications For Voting Systems." By Todd R. Weiss. In ComputerWorld (May 04, 2001). "Six months after the tumultuous presidential balloting in Florida, a nonprofit technical consortium yesterday announced that it has formed a committee to develop a specialized XML standard aimed at improving the accuracy and efficiency of elections. The Billerica, Mass.-based Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) said the new technical committee will work to develop an Election Markup Language (EML) based on XML technology. The EML proposal would include specifications for exchanging data between election and voter registration systems developed by different hardware, software and IT services vendors. Karl Best, director of technical operations for OASIS, said last November's voting brouhaha in Florida graphically showed the need for more accurate elections using modern technology. The improvements envisioned by OASIS could impact public and even private elections around the world, including those held by private groups and companies, he said. The EML committee will look at a wide range of possible implementations for the new specifications, including voter registration, change of address tracking, redistricting, requests for absentee ballots, polling place management, election notification, ballot delivery and tabulation and reporting of election results. While OASIS will only create the specifications and leave it up to technology vendors to implement them, Best said he's confident that the international consortium's standing in the XML world would encourage the adoption of EML by a wide range of companies that offer voting systems and software. Gregg McGilvray, chairman of the new Election and Voter Services Technical Committee within OASIS, said the EML standard will be applicable to far more than just Web-based voting systems. He envisions the standard allowing different platforms, including touchscreen voting machines and even telephone-based systems, to share data regardless of how the information is collected or what operating system is being used. But Steve Weissman, legislative representative for the Washington-based watchdog group Public Citizen, said it's too early to support the EML effort or any other specific ideas for how to improve elections..."
See also: IEEE-SA e-balloting XML specification. "For the convenience of those submitting many comments that have been collated in a external program such as a spreadsheet or database, XML-formatted files containing multiple comments may be submitted via the web interface of the IEEE-SA electronic balloting system. The XML format required is described in a formal DTD. A sample file in the correct format may be downloaded and used for reference..." See the XML DTD and sample. A Perl tool is used to automatically format comments. A sample of output shows what the file should look like. [cache DTD]
