Standards — Election Security Glossary

Standards are the technical and procedural benchmarks that election systems and practices are measured against. They include the federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG), state-level certification criteria, professional and industry best practices, and the consensus documents published by standards organizations like NIST and IEEE.

Why this category matters for election security is that standards give the field a shared reference point. Without them, every jurisdiction would have to invent its own criteria, and there would be no way to compare systems, procedures, or outcomes across jurisdictions. With them, an election official in one county can look at a standard and know what is expected, and a federal agency can audit a state against a known baseline.

Standards are not law. They are voluntary until adopted. The VVSG, for example, only becomes binding when incorporated by reference into a state's certification process or a federal procurement rule. But the voluntary nature of standards is misleading. In practice, adherence to recognized standards is often treated as evidence of due diligence, and departures from them invite scrutiny.

The terminology in this category covers both the standards themselves and the bodies that create them. The concepts here describe a layered system: international standards, federal expectations, state requirements, and local procedures, all building on each other.