Glossary

This glossary gives one stable meaning for each term used on this site. Many of these words are used loosely in everyday speech. Here they are kept apart on purpose: an opinion is not a ballot, a ranking is not a budget, and signing in is not the same as being allowed to vote.

Where a definition rests on a published standard, the standard is cited. Where a term is defined by this framework, the entry says so. A standard cited here is used for its definition only; it is not an approval of this project.

Defined terms

Opinion

A person's stated view on a specific, worded question or proposal, for example support or opposition and how strongly. In this framework an opinion is private by default, may be published only by the person's specific choice, can be revised, and is never treated as a vote. An opinion attached to a proposal becomes stale when the official wording changes. See Opinions.

Ballot

The official instrument, paper or electronic, on which an eligible voter records choices in an election run by a legally responsible authority. A full official ballot can include candidate contests and measures. A ballot is secret and cannot be made public through this framework. These websites do not issue ballots; the demo shows a simulated sample ballot. See Private voting.

Priority

A judgment of relative importance: which subjects deserve attention first. A shared priority says nothing about which policy a person prefers within that subject. Two people who both rank housing first may want opposite housing policies. See Priorities.

Ranking

An ordering of items from most to least important. A ranking is ordinal: it shows order, not distance. Ranking housing first and transport second does not say how much more important housing is. See Measurement.

Resource allocation

A division of a fixed amount, such as 100 tokens or a budget, across items. Unlike a ranking, an allocation expresses relative size. In the demo, allocation applies to a defined fictional pool of new funding and is kept separate from priority. Zero is an explicit choice, not missing data. See Tradeoffs.

Effectiveness assessment

A judgment of whether a program or policy achieves its stated goal, based on evidence. Effectiveness is independent of priority: a subject can matter greatly while a specific program in it works poorly. See Tradeoffs.

Proposal

A specific plan for public action, with an author, a responsible authority, a cost, and a status. An issue is a problem; a proposal is one answer to it. See Proposals.

Ballot item

A proposal or contest that has formally qualified to appear on an official ballot under the law of a jurisdiction. Most proposals never become ballot items. See Proposals.

Identity

The set of attributes that describe a particular person. In digital systems, a claimed identity must be established through identity proofing before it can be relied on. See Identity and registration.

Authentication

NIST defines authentication as "the process by which a claimant proves possession and control of one or more authenticators bound to a subscriber account" ¹. Authentication shows that the person signing in controls an account. It does not show who they are in law or whether they may vote. See Identity and registration.

Identity proofing

NIST defines identity proofing as the processes used to collect, validate, and verify information about a subject to establish assurance in the subject's claimed identity ². Proofing ties an account to a real person to a stated level of confidence ³. See Identity and registration.

Eligibility

Whether a person meets the legal requirements to vote in a particular election, such as age, citizenship, residence, and district. Eligibility is set by law and decided by the responsible authority. Neither authentication nor a biometric establishes it. See Identity and registration.

Registration

The official process by which an eligible person is entered on the voter roll of a jurisdiction. Registration is run by election authorities, not by this framework or its websites. Creating an account on the demo is not registration. See Access and exclusion.

Secrecy

Also: ballot secrecy. The requirement that no one, including the operator, can link a voter to their ballot choices, and that the voter cannot prove those choices to someone else. Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires that genuine periodic elections "be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors" ⁴. See Secret ballot.

Coercion

Pressure on a person to vote, express, or withhold a view in a particular way, through threat, reward, or supervision. Vote buying is one form. Coercion can come from employers, households, or communities, and it is a social problem that technology alone does not remove. See Intimidation.

Verification

Checking that something is what it claims to be. In elections the word covers several distinct checks: a voter confirming their ballot records their choice, and independent parties confirming that ballots were counted as cast. Each kind must be named, because they protect against different failures. See Audits and verification.

Audit

An independent examination of records to test whether a process produced a correct result. An election audit compares reported results with durable records such as paper ballots. See Audits and verification.

Risk-limiting audit

Lindeman and Stark describe a risk-limiting audit as "a method to ensure that at the end of the canvass, the hardware, software, and procedures used to tally votes found the real winners." It does not guarantee the outcome is right, but it has a large chance of correcting a wrong outcome, by manually examining portions of voter-verifiable, generally paper, records ⁵. See Audits and verification.

Published release

A scheduled, approved package of aggregate information, with its methods, denominator, consent basis, version, and corrections, made public at a fixed time. Releases are the only distribution route in this framework; there is no live query service into participant data. See Published releases.

Consent

A person's agreement to a specific use of their information. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, Article 4(11), defines consent as "any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes" given by a statement or clear affirmative action ⁶. This framework adopts that standard as a design floor, everywhere, without claiming the regulation applies in every jurisdiction. See Consent.

Aggregate

A summary of many people's answers, such as a count, share, or ranking, that does not show any individual's answer. Small groups can still reveal individuals, so aggregates need minimum group sizes and a documented privacy review before release. See Measurement.

Synthetic data

Artificial records generated to resemble real data or a defined scenario. NIST describes synthetic data generation as "a process in which seed data are used to create artificial data that have some of the statistical characteristics of the seed data" ⁷. The demo uses synthetic data that is labeled "Simulated data" and never presented as real participation. See Status.

Jurisdiction

A government unit with legal authority over a defined area and subject, such as a nation, state, county, city, school district, or special district. People live inside several jurisdictions at once, each with its own powers and calendar. See Jurisdictions.

Participation

Taking part in a civic process, such as answering, attending, proposing, or voting. Participants are those who took part; they are not the same as the whole public. See Participation over time.

Representation

Acting on behalf of others. The term covers several distinct ideas, including who is chosen, whom they resemble, and whether they respond to the people they serve. Hanna Pitkin's book is a conceptual analysis of what the word means ⁸. See Representation.

Passkey

The FIDO Alliance defines a passkey as "an authentication credential based on FIDO standards," using public key cryptography; a user approves sign-in with the same method that unlocks their device, such as a biometric or PIN ⁹. NIST calls credentials whose keys can be copied across a person's devices syncable authenticators ¹. A passkey authenticates an account; it does not prove eligibility. See Hardware.

Evidence

The authentication and identity terms rest on NIST SP 800-63-4, the current revision of the NIST digital identity guidelines, which supersedes SP 800-63-3 ³. The secrecy definition rests on international treaty text. Other definitions are this framework's own working definitions and are labeled as such by the absence of a citation.

Competing interpretations

Several terms are used differently elsewhere. "Verification" in some election literature means voter-side checking only; "registration" in some countries is automatic; "representation" has rival theories. This glossary fixes one meaning for use on this site and links to chapters that discuss alternatives.

Application to this framework

The framework depends on keeping these terms apart. If an opinion were treated as a ballot, or authentication as eligibility, the protections described in the trust chapters would fail. Every chapter uses these definitions.

Unresolved questions

• Should "participation" count reading and learning, or only recorded actions?
• What minimum group size should an aggregate require before release? This needs a documented privacy design.