The term "software independence" (SI) was coined by Dr. Ron Rivest

Ron Rivest

Ronald Linn Rivest is a cryptographer. He is the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Computer Science at MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...

 and NIST

National Institute of Standards and Technology

The National Institute of Standards and Technology , known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards , is a measurement standards laboratory, otherwise known as a National Metrological Institute , which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce...

 researcher John Wack. A software independent voting machine

Voting machine

Voting machines are the total combination of mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic equipment , that is used to define ballots; to cast and count votes; to report or display election results; and to maintain and produce any audit trail information...

 is one whose tabulation record does not rely solely on software. The goal of an SI system is to definitively determine whether all votes recorded are legitimately or by error.

The technical definition of SI is:

A voting system is software-independent if an undetected change or error in its software cannot cause an undetectable change or error in an election outcome.

SI has been redefined as a global property for a tabulation of votes rather than of each individual vote, aiming to detect rather than prevent error and fraud through human processes.

TGDC Resolution

The Election Assistance Commission

Election Assistance Commission

The Election Assistance Commission is an independent agency of the United States government created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 . The Commission serves as a national clearinghouse and resource of information regarding election administration...

's Technical Guidelines Development Committee

Technical Guidelines Development Committee

The Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology supports the Election Assistance Commission in the United States by providing recommendations on voluntary standards and guidelines related to voting equipment and technologies...

 adopted an SI resolution for the next iteration of the VVSG:

Election officials and vendors have appropriately responded to the growing complexity of voting systems by adding more stringent access controls, encryption, testing, and physical security to election procedures and systems. The TGDC has considered current threats to voting systems and, at this time, finds that security concerns do not warrant replacing deployed voting systems where EAC Best Practices are used.

To provide auditability and proactively address the increasing difficulty of protecting against all prospective threats, the TGDC directs STS to write requirements for the next version of the VVSG requiring the next generation of voting systems to be software independent. The TGDC directs STS and HFP to draft usability and accessibility requirements to ensure that all voters can verify the independent voting record.

The TGDC further directs STS and Core Requirements and Testing Subcommittees (CRT) to draft requirements to ensure that systems that produce independently verifiable voting records are reliable and provide adequate support for audits.

Example systems

Examples of software-independent voting systems are optical scan voting system

Optical scan voting system

An optical scan voting system is an electronic voting system and uses an optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and tally the results.-History:...

s and direct recording electronic voting computer

DRE voting machine

A direct-recording electronic voting machine records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter ; that processes data by means of a computer program; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components...

s (DRE) with a voter verified paper audit trail

Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail

Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail or Verified Paper Record is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored...

.