The Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense------members of the Election Assistance Commission

With encouragement from Congress, the Department of Defense (DoD) may provide funding to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop Remote Internet Voting System Standards (RIVSS) which it would then employ to guide its use of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) that would let military personnel overseas and stationed domestically, as well as civilian U.S. voters abroad, vote in Federal elections over the Internet.

The provision requiring the EAC to develop an RIVSS was a surprise addition to the conference report for the 2005 Defense Authorization Bill. This bill serves to reconcile the provisions in the Senate and House versions of this legislation. The House version called for ending the SERVE program, while the Senate version called for delaying its implementation but continuing it.

To read more about Section 567 of the 2005 Defense Authorization Bill conference report, click here.

Just where in the system the responsibility, or opportunity, to move forward with remote Internet voting for military and overseas civilian personnel is not completely clear. According to a source:

"The role EAC plays is to develop the guidelines. We encouraged DoD to provide some funding assistance to EAC or to the standards agency, if needed, to assist them in the process. To the extent that they participate and produce standards and guidelines, DoD will move forward. If that doesn't happen, then the program lays dormant until such time as that does happen."

Further inquiries may be able to more completely elucidate the question of whether EAC, in legal terms, "shall" develop these RIVSS for the Pentagon to use, or whether it "may" develop them. If EAC only "may" develop them (at its sole discretion), how strongly will Defense "encourage" them to do so?

Apart from the motivation issues, it's also not clear how much such an effort would cost and how much extra money EAC and NIST would need to carry it out, if they decide to do so. Will the Pentagon be willing to pick up the entire tab in order to assure that the work is done, and soon?

The answers to these questions are important not just because of what they would mean for military and overseas voters, but because the RIVSS, once developed for use by the Defense Department, might reasonably be expected to provide a viable means of qualifying, not just the SERVE system, but other, primarily domestic, remote Internet voting systems for certification by election authorities in the several states and for purchase and use by the local election officials in every American county.

For the answers to these and other, related, questions, keep watching this space.