VVSG 2.0 Becomes a Reality: First Voting System Certified Under New Guidelines

On July 10, 2025, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced a milestone years in the making: the first voting system has now been certified under the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. With this certification—awarded to a system submitted by Hart InterCivic—VVSG 2.0 officially transitions from an aspirational blueprint to an operational reality for U.S. election administrators.

This moment provides the perfect opportunity to highlight how VVSG 2.0 is driving a new era of voter-centered election technology in the United States, turning long-standing principles into concrete, certifiable reality. 

Central to this shift is VVSG’s long-standing principle that voters—not machines or procedures—are the most important actors on Election Day. Designing a system that ensures that every voter gets to cast their ballot and that their choice is accurately captured preoccupies election managers in any modern democracy. The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) is an important framework that places voters at the center of election design.

More than a technical standard, VVSG embodies a philosophy that combines accessibility, security, and transparency to ensure elections serve the people. 

The VVSG initiative traces its roots to the early 2000s, in the aftermath of the controversial 2000 U.S. presidential election. Issues with ballot counting, inconsistent machine performance, and accessibility challenges highlighted the urgent need for national standards. In response, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 created the Federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), tasked with overseeing election reforms and developing voluntary standards for voting systems. The first VVSG, released in 2005, focused on reliability, basic accessibility, and security, laying the foundation for a more uniform and trustworthy election process.

While early VVSG versions emphasized technical compliance, later iterations recognized that voter experience is equally critical. VVSG 1.1 and subsequent drafts expanded requirements for usability, accessibility, and transparency. Features like multilingual support, screen reader compatibility, and alternative input methods ensure that voters can cast ballots independently and confidently. By prioritizing the needs of real voters, the guidelines aim to reduce errors, shorten lines, and build confidence in electoral outcomes.

VVSG 2.0, the current standard, builds on these principles while integrating lessons from cybersecurity, usability research, and election audits. It requires voter-verifiable paper records, enabling independent audits and providing tangible evidence of every vote cast. Systems must meet strict security protocols, including encryption, access control, and secure software updates. Interoperability standards ensure machines from different vendors work seamlessly together, while modular designs allow jurisdictions to adopt new technologies without sacrificing integrity.

A concept closely associated with voter-centered design is software independence. This principle ensures that even if a system's software is compromised, the election outcome cannot be altered undetectably. VVSG 2.0 raises the bar for election system security and transparency by instituting software independence as a mandate. This pragmatic approach balances rigorous security with practical feasibility, making VVSG applicable across jurisdictions of varying sizes and resources. 

The development of VVSG has always been collaborative. Election officials, technology vendors, accessibility experts, and security researchers contribute to shaping the standards, ensuring they address real-world needs. This inclusive approach reinforces a fundamental truth: elections gain legitimacy when the systems supporting them are transparent, secure, and inclusive. 

From its origins responding to ballot controversies in 2000 to its current standards promoting security, accessibility, and auditability, VVSG gives shape to the principle that election technology must combine human-centered design with layered security measures to build a system serves democracy, not dictate it.

Presidential candidate in Brazil to seek own voting system audit

In the feverish run up to the Brazilian elections in October, President Jair Bolsonaro is seeking an audit of the voting system, a move that comes after the embattled leader had relentlessly questioned the credibility of the country’s voting systems.

“As allowed by electoral law, we will hire a company to do the audit,” Bolsonaro said.

“People want transparent elections in which the vote is effectively counted for their candidate.”

The president’s sweeping claims had been met with backlash, the most furious of which had come from Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court judges who had flatly refuted Bolsonaro’s allegations and categorically declaring that Brazil’s electoral system is free of fraud.

Luis Barroso, president of Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court, once fired back at Bolsonaro saying “threatening the realization of an election represents anti-democratic behavior. Polluting the public debate with disinformation, lies, hatred and conspiracy theories represents anti-democratic behavior.”

Surprisingly, Bolsonaro appears to have made a fatal misstep as a recent Genial/Quaest opinion survey shows that his bombastic attacks on the voting system is turning off moderate voters. Furthermore, despite the vitriol spewed against the voting system, trust of electronic voting machines among Brazilians has increased to 22% of the electorate from a low of 27% in September, the survey revealed.

More alarmingly for Bolsonaro, the poll also showed that voter support for him dipped after three months of gains against former Lula.

The survey indicated that if the elections were held in April, Lula would have won 46% of the votes against 29% for Bolsonaro. Lula is on track to reaching 50% of the votes and winning the election right in the first round, according to the survey. In case the contest goes to a second-round runoff, the survey said that Lula would defeat Bolsonaro by 54% versus 34%.

"Voters believe the president is wrong to confront the Supreme Court, to question the credibility of electronic voting machines," said survey director Felipe Nunes.

Moderate voters are the swing votes that could be key to winning the election because most supporters of Bolsonaro or Lula have already decided who they will vote for.

Election experts warn against RFID-based voting systems

A voting system which uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to store electronic votes has been under scrutiny after election experts questioned its capacity to safeguard the integrity of election data. 

Though the voting system had been tested in a few Argentine jurisdictions, academics from around the world had not had a real chance to analyze it in detail until authorities from the Democratic Republic of Congo decided to use a similar system for the long-delayed elections of December, 2018. The decision to automate the controversial elections using an untested system drew criticism from U.S. diplomats.

According to experts from The Sentry, it is possible to manipulate the information the RFID chip contains, since the use of this unique identifier technology and radio communications give off signals that can be easily detected at distances greater than expected. Experts recommend election officials to refrain from implementing this type of technology. 

RFID technology is well known for its usefulness in tracking inventories, but its use extends to other industries, from bookstores and apparel to health and transportation. The main benefit of having RFIDs is that it allows quick communication with remote sensors. Nonetheless, however useful RFID may be for certain industries, elections are an entirely different ballgame. The capacity to allow remote sensors to read the information it contains opens the door for bad actors to hack the votes. 

An RFID-based system was ruled out in Israel in 2010 as it was considered unsafe. Researchers Yossef Oren and Avishai Wool, from the Tel-Aviv University, demonstrated that the secret of the vote was compromised with such type of systems. In their paper, they “show how the proposed system can be completely compromised using low-cost relay attacks. Our attacks allow an adversary to read out all votes already cast into the ballot box, suppress the votes of one or several voters, rewrite votes at will and even completely disqualify all votes in a single voting station. Our attacks are easy to mount, very difficult to detect, and compromise both the confidentiality and the integrity of the election system.”

The future of this technology is unknown. For now, only a few Argentine provinces have dared to use it. The elections in Congo, which led to weeks of post-election violence and political unrest, are a testament to what a poorly designed election system can do to the legitimacy of elections.

Questions loom over Venezuela’s electronic voting system

The recent regional elections held on October 15 in Venezuela, have sparked a new wave of controversy around Venezuelan elections and the legitimacy of its results.

Andres Velasquez, who was the opposition candidate for the southern state of Bolivar, is crying foul and claims to have physical copies of all tally reports to back his claim. According to Velasquez, the printed machine tallying reports show thousands of more votes for him than the National Elections Council (CNE in Spanish) website shows.

As reported by Anatoly Kurmanaev for the Wall Street Journal, Luis Lander, director of the Venezuelan Electoral Observatory, a nonpartisan group in Caracas that tracks elections stated “There’s clear manipulation here,” after he examined voting-machine receipts that the opposition alliance posted online. “The results were altered to allow the losing candidate to be declared the winner,” he added.

Although the evidence presented seems conclusive, the truth is that fraud accusations should not come as a surprise. “Crying fraud is an extremely familiar routine to the Venezuelan opposition, and one that it has pursued at virtually every election since 1999,” wrote Rachael Boothroyd Rojas on venezuelanalysis.com.

David Smilde, a US scholar who has followed the political struggles in Venezuela, recently penned an article asking authorities and opposition parties come up with good answers to explain what has transpired through the press. He emphasized that “Both the CNE and the MUD have the ability to significantly clarify what happened and they should do so as soon as possible.”

Describing the electronic voting system used in Venezuela, and how easy could be to determine who is telling the truth, Smilde commented “Venezuela’s voting system has a solid system of audits and checks. Fantasies of secret tabulation rooms that alter the vote can be set aside. Each voter who votes, gets a paper receipt saying who she voted for, and then deposits it in a box. After the elections, the citizens who are working at the tables, representing all parties, count the ballots. Then they check their tabulation with the act that is printed out from the machine. They sign off on it and the parties’ witnesses get a copy of it. These acts can then be compared to the electoral tallies presented by the National Electoral Council (CNE) on their web page, and any fraud can be detected.”

Further complicating matters, during the National Constituency election held in August 2017, the CEO of Smartmatic, the company that had provided the electronic voting solution for all election since 2004, denounced that the turnout figures published by authorities had been manipulated by at least one million. Authorities disregarded the accusation as pure nonsense and proceeded to organize these latest elections with new technology providers.

Francisco Toro, from Caracas Chronicle, thinks “Venezuela’s machine-based electoral system has many, deep problems, but one key redeeming feature: it can be audited.” Questions are looming over Venezuela’s electronic voting system. It is time to act, and audit the tallying reports to find out what happened and clear all doubts. The future of a nation formerly regarded as a democracy beacon is at stake.

Replace postal voting with secure internet voting

The traditional view of collecting votes during an election would entail having citizens visit an official polling place to cast their ballot. In the past, this may have been with colored balls in marked jars, but it has since evolved to involve paper ballots, pull-lever machines and direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, some with intuitive touchscreen displays and advanced security measures. 

While this standard, regardless of the exact mechanism used, largely remains the primary way that most democracies in the world allow their citizens to exercise their right to vote, it is not always enough on its own. Particularly when it comes to universal access and convenience, people living in rural areas or more remote parts of the country can encounter significant difficulty in making the physical trip to a polling place in the city.

The world as a whole is experiencing a greater level of urbanization than ever before, but this does not mean that people living outside of major metropolitan areas should have any greater difficulty in casting a vote than their urban counterparts. To address this, electoral commissions have typically relied on postal voting, offering an extended period of time where citizens could send their ballots in through the regular postal mail.

However, postal voting is “becoming increasingly problematic” for a number of reasons. The pieces of mail can easily become lost and sending private ballots through the postal service may not live up to the security and confidentiality standards that a legitimate election should have. Mail tampering is not uncommon and this could jeopardize the integrity of the election results.

A more recent solution to gain popularity in countries like Estonia is Internet-based voting. Also called i-voting, online voting may not necessarily replace precinct-based voting places for the majority of people, but it can provide much greater access and convenience to those who wish to use an online system instead. 

Naturally, there are also many concerns about security when it comes to anything to do with the Internet, but these concerns can be suitably addressed if the proper audits are in place and the right firms are handled to manage the elections. Online systems have the potential of becoming the victim of malicious attacks, but they can be prevented. The hacking of an online vote in the Canadian province of Alberta was suitably thwarted, despite “multiple attempts to infiltrate the website.” The internal security systems prevented these attacks from having any impact on the results of the vote.

Because of the possibility of such attacks, it is important that all online voting systems allow for an adequate period of time during which voters can cast their ballots online. The time needs to be sufficient to mitigate a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Should the voting website go down for a period of time, there needs to be enough time to recover and to ensure that voters can still cast their vote.

As expert William J. Kelleher has asserted in the past, Internet voting can be safe and reliable and it is certainly a more viable, scalable and secure solution than the increasingly archaic system of postal voting.

Debating Internet voting in the UK

Source: www.cbc.ca

The Internet is used for just about every aspect of everyday life. It is where people go to connect with one another through dating sites and social media. It is where people go to shop for the latest fashions and gadgets. It is where they go to get the most up-to-date news and opinions on world events. It's where they do their banking and even use a range of government services.

Given this, it is somewhat surprising that voting over the Internet, sometimes called i-voting and occasionally included in the broader discussion of e-voting, hasn't already been more widely implemented in more countries around the world. To further this discussion, Senior Political Correspondent Jason Farrell of the UK's Sky News recently engaged in an online webchat via Google Hangouts with three guests on the merits and challenges of casting a ballot via the web. The full replay of the 22 minute debate has been uploaded to YouTube.

In that discussion, WebRoots Democracy founder Areeq Chowdhury points out that it's almost a common sense point to modernize the democracy in the United Kingdom and bring it up to date by offering an online option for voting in elections. The Internet, as mentioned above, already infiltrates such a wide range of daily activities and to retain the archaic pen-and-paper method of casting a ballot as the primary method of voting feels incredibly outdated.

Indeed, just as Sir Richard Branson feels that the Internet is the future of voting, all of the guests on the program also support its adoption, but not without some hesitations. There is the risk of security threats for “hacked” votes that would compromise the integrity and legitimacy of election results. Chowdhury agrees that there are risks and there will be flaws. He also agrees that the lack of a paper trail to verify votes cast can also be worrisome, but he feels that the bigger risk at play is the risk of losing even more voters. The drop in voter turnout has been alarming and it needs to be address. The electorate needs to be more engaged with the political process and taking the vote online, along with other tools related to the election, can help to keep the modern political system relevant for voters both young and old.

To this end, Emma Mulqueeny of the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy feels that should an i-voting system be implemented in the United Kingdom, it makes more sense to look at the things that people are already engaging with online. She uses the example of social media, like Facebook, as a possible route for developing an online voting system rather than spending excessive amounts of money to develop a brand new system from scratch that could just as easily be riddled with flaws and problems.

In response to critics and naysayers who fear an online voting system that can be hacked by criminals, Mulqueeny says it is actually far easier to trace a digital footprint online, looking through servers and IP addresses, than it is to trace any ill-doing and tampering through paper ballots. It is harder to be completely anonymous on the Internet. Chowdhury agrees that everything has flaws and nothing is 100% secure, but people are still willing to utilize services – online and offline – that are equally as insecure as an online voting system. The issue is whether or not you can secure it to an adequate level.

Perhaps one of the most telling perspectives came from National Youth Council in Estonia member Marju Tamp as Estonia has been a leader in the I-voting revolution for a number of years. She says the security has been “flawless” and the Internet-based voting has been a very positive experience overall. Surprisingly, the older generation is actually accepting i-voting more happily than youth in her country.

Internet voting offers a compelling possibility in the United Kingdom and throughout the rest of the democratic world. Watch the full 22-minute Stand Up Debate from Sky News on YouTube.