No matter the election system, there are four gated stages to the election process:
* the Vetting of people to determine eligibility to vote,
* the Issuing of Ballots,
* the actual Election where people vote, and then
* the Counting of votes (producing the results)
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The table below has 5 columns. On the far left 1st column, there are four ways to implement EIP presented:
* HCPB (EIP) - Hand Count of Paper Ballots using EIP constraints
* EIP-TDL and EIP-TC - Two similar ways of implementing EIP, which is a tokenized (T) ballot system. The first is using distributed ledgers (EIP-TDL), the other using a centralized data store (EIP-TC)
The decision of which to implement is based largely on scalability, cost and performance requirements
The next two rows present two different options for creating EIP “sidecars”, which are software systems or components that may be “plugged in” along side of a different existing election system in order to enforce EIP compliance, or to validate them.
* EIP Sidecar (HCPB) - An EIP sidecar attached to an existing hand count of paper ballot process to allow for tacking of votes counted by a teller committee
* EIP Sidecar (Vendor) - An EIP sidecar attached to another system or device to feed data to EIP as the system processes an election
The following 4 columns in the table present the four stages of the election process, which are universal regardless of what type of election system is used; they are required. These stages are “gated” in the sense that as they move from left to right, the next stage cannot be completed until the previous stage is successfully completed.
Note that since EIP is a protocol, any of these 4 implementation options will obtain the same result.
Implementation | Vet | Issue | Elect | Count |
HCPB (EIP) | Vetting Registrar | Paper Ballot | Voting Booth | Teller Committee |
| EIP-TDL EIP-TC | Vetting Registrar^ | Tracking Number (token) + Electronic Ballot (e-ballot) | Web Browser | • Instantaneous & Automatic • The People can immediately count their own votes |
| EIP Sidecar (HCPB) | Vetting Registrar | Paper Ballot + Tracking Number + e-ballot | Voting Booth + Web Browser | Teller Committee + EIP Instantaneous |
| EIP Sidecar (Vendor) | Varies | Varies + EIP CVR API | Vendor Supplied | Vendor + EIP Instantaneous |
Each EIP implementation completes these stages to produce the same result, but how they go about it will vary, lending to different characteristics for performance, accuracy, cost, transparency, scalability, etc. While some of these may be more familiar (tried and true), that doesn’t mean they are the best option. For example, the hand counting of paper ballots (HCPB) may work just fine for a small community familiar with the process, but this same localized jurisdiction may prefer a faster and cheaper EIP-TC solution. For larger elections spanning multiple remote jurisdictions that require flexibility and the need to scale well, an EIP-TDL (Tokenized Distributed Ledger) is “hands down” the best overall, no matter the venue.