Fearful that Election 2008 will devolve into an e-voting miasma of epic proportions? Well, wax conspiratorial no longer.At least that’s the tenor of today’s OASIS announcement of EML (Election Markup Language) 5.0, which has garnered the highest level of ratification the standards body has to offer.“By providing a uniform, secure, and verifiable way for voting systems to interact, EML safeguards voter confidence in the election process,” Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, said in a statement. (For the record, Gannon also serves on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee.) The standard, built on XML schemas, covers the election data transaction gamut, from candidate nomination, to voter registration and authentication, to vote casting, confirmation, tabulation, and auditing. It even includes a new VoterID element that is repeatable — a handy bit of scalability for those governments seeking to extend the list of required modes of identification for its citizens to participate in the election process. And who do we have to thank for this electoral safeguard standard? A multilateral crossing of myriad corporate aisles, with EDS, IBM, and Oracle topping the list.Driving the consensus was a mission 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.” Focusing on the interfaces between components of election systems, what the standard doesn’t answer for is the security of the systems themselves. Per the document: “References to security within EML are not to be taken as comprehensive requirements for all election systems in all election scenarios, nor as recommendations or sufficiency of approach when addressing all the security aspects of election system design, implementation or evaluation. In fact, the data security mechanisms described in this document are all optional, enabling compliance with EML without regard for system security at all.”Not exactly a rousing vote of confidence for the standard’s ability to ensure the integrity of election results. Finger in the eye aside, the movement toward open, standardized voting transactions is a welcome one — especially as the trend toward electronic-based voting systems appears virtually irreversible.And to hear the standard’s authors tell it, you’d think the e-voting train was fueled by your interest in sharing photos of datacenters on Flickr and bidding up Atari 2600s on eBay, rather than the government or technology vendors:“Times are changing. Society is becoming more and more web oriented and citizens, used to the high degree of flexibility in the services provided by the private sector and in the Internet in particular, are now beginning to set demanding standards for the delivery of services by governments using modern electronic delivery methods,” the document states. Although it does admit that gadgets alone won’t cure election no-showism, OASIS lends a little tech evangelism to its undertaking, syllogizing, “The implementation of electronic voting would allow increased access to the voting process for millions of potential voters. Higher levels of voter participation will lend greater legitimacy to the electoral process and should help to reverse the trend towards voter apathy that is fast becoming a feature of many democracies.”Not exactly an argument that boils down to, The more it looks like a widget, the more likely folks are to press on it, but certainly one that assumes “electronic” invokes less voter skepticism. True, the adoption of open e-voting standards will mitigate some doubters’ qualms, but is defining the XML schema for voting data transactions assurance enough? Technology Industry