Standards Board Newsletter 

October 2016 

Volume 3, Issue 3 

Executive Board of the Standards Board 

Mark Goins, TN State, Chair 

Edgardo Cortes, VA State, Vice-Chair 

Brad King, IN State, Secretary 

Paul Lux, FL Local 

Gary Poser, MN State 

Jerry Schwarting, SD Local 

Rey Valenzuela, AZ Local 

Genevieve Whitaker, VI Local 

Sally Williams, MI State 

U.S. Election Assistance Commission 

1335 E West Highway • Suite 4300 • Silver Spring, MD 20910 

www.eac.gov 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Letter from the Secretary 

Looking ahead to 2017 and beyond! 

We are all understandably and properly focusing on preparing for the November 8, 2016 General Election. A 

presidential election brings its own special challenges as an overlay to the work involved in conducting any election. 

On that note, you will find some very helpful information in this newsletter that you can use today in working with 

the U.S. Postal Service to help solve “postal problems” that many election administrators encounter. 

However, your Standards Board representatives and committees have been “time traveling” into the future to lay 

the groundwork for tasks that will be completed long after the last vote has been counted next month. The 

Executive Board has set the date and location for the next meeting of the full membership of the Standards Board: 

April 27-28, 2017 in San Antonio, Texas. More information on this meeting will be provided in future newsletters 

when the EAC completes its work in identifying the potential sites for this event. 

Your representatives to the TGDC participated in a recent meeting of that Committee which focused on the scope 

and content of the next iteration of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, and discussed the cybersecurity issues 

that have drawn national attention to our voting systems and statewide voter registration systems. Work continues 

on refining future versions of the EAVS to reduce ambiguity and confusion in submitting responses to this survey. A 

long-term discussion of the role of the EAC Clearinghouse has begun. 

Thanks to the chairs and members of your Standards Board committees for their dedication to these important 

long-term projects while the excitement (and sometimes chaos) of the 2016 general election swirls around us. I 

hope to see you all in San Antonio after the dust has settled! 

Brad King, Secretary 

USPS Committee Update 

Sally Williams reported that the new Standards Board USPS Committee was officially formed at the Board’s meeting 

in Carlsbad, California in April. The group has held three meetings thus far to discuss and begin documenting a 

variety of relevant issues and topics that will form a master plan for the group. Given the important link between 

election administration and the postal service, the work of this committee is expected to be both busy and ongoing. 

Also given the makeup of the Standards Board membership with representation from every US state and territory at 

both the state and local level, the USPS committee hopes to work as a communication gateway and information 

repository to assist election officials nationally on election mail issues. 

For the 2016 presidential election cycle, the group is focused on providing information to membership on the tools 

and communication channels available via the US Postal Service, the EAC and others to become more informed and 

to report and resolve election mail issues. 

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Resources to Assist with Election Mail are Available Now! 

•	 Electionmail.org: One of the most helpful tools available to election administrators is electionmail.org. 

Democracy Works and the Bipartisan Policy Center have teamed up to collect, report and fix election mail 

problems by working directly with USPS administration at both the national and local level. Electionmail.org also 

independently monitors the response by USPS to reported issues and tracks trends that may be helpful in 

identifying and resolving issues on a wider scale. The USPS has been very responsive to reports submitted by 

election administrators. 

Now is the time to make sure common problems, such as delivery delay, lost mail, postmark issues and 

misdirected mail are reported. The collection of this data assists the USPS in fixing issues before November and 

identifying service needs for future elections. Share this information with the election administrators in your 

state and encourage them to use this website (http://electionmail.org) to report any problems, providing as 

much detail as possible! Election administrators in several states have been using electionmail.org throughout 

2016 and are thrilled with the timely response and follow-up from the USPS. Many thanks to Tammy Patrick of 

the Bipartisan Policy Center for her continued work with the USPS to assist and pursue these improvements. See 

the flyer on the following page, which can also be used to more widely communicate this valuable tool. 

•	 Election/Political Mail Coordinators: The USPS also offers an interactive site to map and locate the Election 

Mail Specialists available to each state: http://about.usps.com/gov-services/election-mail/political-mailmap.htm . This is a simple tool that you can use to locate and directly contact USPS specialists in your area -

another resource that can be valuable to election administrators nationwide. 

•	 EAC Website: The EAC website’s BeReady16 campaign includes a dedicated web page for mail-related issues 

(http://votebymail.gov). This site contains a variety of relevant links, tools, resources and best practices – check 

it out (as well as the entire BeReady16 website at http://eac.gov)! 

Best of luck to the Standards Board members as we enter the home stretch of the 2016 election cycle - you can 

expect to hear more from the USPS committee! Many thanks to our USPS committee members: Sally Williams, 

Chair; Josie Bahnke; Edgardo Cortes; Barbara K.D. Goeckner; Jackie Gonzales; Brad King; Charlotte Mills; Carol Olson; 

Derrin (Dag) Robinson; Dennis Shively; and Justus Wendland. 

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Technical Guidelines Development Committee Update 

The TGDC met on September 15-16, 2016 at Gaithersburg, Maryland, where the offices of the National Institute of 

Standards and Technology (NIST) are located. The meeting was described as “the next step in moving forward with 

the development of the next generation of voluntary voting system guidelines.” 

Bob Giles, one of the Standards Board representatives to TGDC, was at NIST, and took time during a meeting break 

to update the Executive Board regarding the presentations and discussions underway at the meeting. He indicated 

that discussions concerning security were a large part of the meeting, and that discussion was focusing on the entire 

election process, such as voter registration systems. He said that this could result in the development of best 

practices in addition to the Guidelines. 

Bob reported that TGDC members were discussing whether electronic pollbooks which activate or “touch” a voting 

system should be covered by the VVSG, and whether testing was desirable to determine compliance with both 

internal and external requirements for electronic pollbooks. He noted that the TGDC Cybersecurity working group 

will discuss whether there is a security issue that arises in these situations, and whether this should be addressed in 

the next version of VVSG. Bob noted that the question of whether to test or not test electronic pollbooks raised the 

question of the scope of VVSG. 

Bob indicated that the larger issue is whether the current definition of “voting system” in HAVA is adequate or 

needs to be expanded. 

Cybersecurity Discussions Continue; Standards Board Reaches Out to Homeland Security 

During its September teleconference call, the Executive Board received information from EAC Executive Director 

Newby regarding the ongoing discussions in several forums regarding election security. He said that Commissioner 

Matt Masterson was expected to speak before a U.S. House of Representatives committee on this topic, and would 

emphasize the need for input from representatives from voting system laboratories, Secretaries of State, and other 

state and local election officials. He indicated that the EAC had emphasized to the U.S. Department of Homeland 

Security (DHS) and to the FBI that they should be speaking with state and local election officials on this topic, since 

each state conducts its own elections (rather than participating in a national election). 

The Executive Board approved a letter to be sent by Chair Mark Goins to DHS explaining the role of the Standards 

Board in the election process, and offering to work with DHS. 

EAC Clearinghouse Committee Work Underway 

Genevieve Whitaker reported that the Committee had its first meeting on September 7, and had been joined by EAC 

staffers Bryan Whitener and Mark Abbott. She said that the Committee began its work by seeking to gain a basic 

understanding of the Clearinghouse and knowledge of its history, and indicated that she had sent Committee 

members a copy of the most recent Strategic Plan for the Clearinghouse. She said that the Committee would review 

the Plan to determine which objectives have been fulfilled, and which objectives need further work, and to develop 

a strategy for implementation. She noted that the Committee would work to develop bullet points on the purpose 

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of the Clearinghouse, and was discussing developing a link for a compendium of state election laws (on subjects 

such as poll workers), and the status of HAVA itself. 

During the September Executive Board teleconference call, EAC Executive Director Newby noted that a full-time EAC 

employee will be working on the new website for EAC, and that the EAC planned to move to its new website shortly 

after the November 2016 election. 

Election Administration and Voting Survey Committee “Section B Workgroup” Meets 

Edgardo Cortes reported that the EAVS Section B workgroup had met in mid-September with the Council of State 

Governments (CSG) and the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) to discuss updating survey instructions to 

help clarify the information being requested by EAVS. He said that the EAVS contractor, Fors Marsh, would take 

questions in an upcoming webinar to help identify issues to address for the next round of the survey and to collect 

the information needed and communicate in an effective way. He indicated that there would be time before the 

April 2017 Standards Board meeting to develop proposed survey changes, and that the EAVS Committee planned to 

meet shortly after the November election and after Fors Marsh received feedback from the webinar. 

He advised that the EAVS Committee would work with Fors Marsh to implement a pilot project with a couple of 

states in which states will take the survey information and provide results in a flat file extract so that data entry 

won’t be necessary. He indicated that Fors Marsh would provide a report concerning this pilot project to EAC and 

FVAP. 

Preparatory Work Begins for 2017 San Antonio Meeting; Bylaws Amendments; Board Elections 

Chair Mark Goins reported to the Executive Board that he had been working with EAC Commissioners McCormick 

and Masterson to be certain that there would be time before the April 2017 meeting to have proposals concerning 

the Guidelines ready for the Board to review, and had been assured that this would be the case. 

The Chair noted that the meeting schedule tentatively provided for April 25 as a travel day; April 26 for a tour of a 

mail processing facility and a military base; April 27 for a full day meeting; and April 28 for a half day meeting. 

Concerning other meeting preparatory work, Brad King reported that no resolutions or proposed amendments to 

the Standards Board Bylaws had yet been filed. He noted that under the Bylaws, any proposed amendment must be 

submitted in writing to EAC Commissioner Christy McCormick, who serves as the Designated Federal Officer for the 

Standards Board no later than February 16, 2017, 70 days before the date of the San Antonio meeting. 

The Executive Board noted that the two-year terms of three Executive Board members will expire in April 2017, and 

that under the Bylaws, the Nominating Committee must send Standards Board members a solicitation of 

nominations no later than December 1, 2016. 

SAVE THE DATES: SAN ANTONIO, APRIL 27-28, 2017! 

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