52 U.S.C. § 20961 — Technical Guidelines Development Committee

(a) Establishment: This section creates the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, called the Development Committee. (b) Duties: (1) In general: The Development Committee helps the Commission's Executive Director develop the voluntary voting system guidelines. (2) Deadline for initial set of recommendations: The Development Committee must give the Executive Director its first set of recommendations within 9 months after all of its members are appointed. (c) Membership: (1) In general: The Development Committee has 15 members: the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who chairs it, plus 14 others jointly appointed by the Commission and that Director. Those 14 include an equal number of Standards Board members, Board of Advisors members, and members of the Architectural and Transportation Barrier Compliance Board under section 792 of title 29; a representative of the American National Standards Institute; a representative of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; two representatives picked by the National Association of State Election Directors, who cannot already be on the Standards Board or Board of Advisors and cannot belong to the same political party as each other; and other individuals with technical or scientific expertise in voting systems and equipment. (2) Quorum: A majority of members makes a quorum, but the Development Committee cannot do any business until all of its members are appointed. (d) No compensation for service: Development Committee members do not get paid for their service, but they do get travel expenses, including a per diem in place of covering their own living costs, at the rate set for federal agency employees under subchapter I of chapter 57 of title 5, whenever they are away from home or their regular workplace doing Committee work. (e) Technical support from National Institute of Standards and Technology: (1) In general: If the Development Committee asks, the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology must give it the technical support it needs to do its job. (2) Technical support: That support must include in-house research and development to help build the voluntary voting system guidelines, covering the security of the computers, computer networks, and data storage used in voting systems (including the computerized voter list required under section 21083(a)); ways to detect and stop fraud; protecting voter privacy; how human factors — including assistive technology for people with disabilities such as blindness, and for people with different literacy levels — should shape voting system design; and remote access voting, including voting over the Internet. (3) No private sector intellectual property rights in guidelines: No private person or company can claim intellectual property rights to any guideline, or its contents or modifications, once the Commission adopts it. (f) Publication of recommendations in Federal Register: Whenever the Commission adopts a voluntary voting system guideline under section 20962, the Development Committee must publish in the Federal Register the recommendations it gave the Executive Director about that guideline.