A desperately overdue update of federal guidelines could dovetail into conspiracy theories about voting machines.
The new standards will be rolled out on Nov. 15, 2023, just a year ahead of a presidential election that might include Trump. On guard against falling public trust in elections, officials worry every word in their new standards will be scrutinized by a new, not always kind, audience.
One word the agency used in the rollout of the new standards is particularly vexing: “deprecation.” Election officials worried using the term would fuel false belief that older voting machines could no longer be used.— the agency had stressed on its website that “depreciation does not mean decertification.” But the agency recently scrubbed the word “depreciation” anyway, knowing it was problematic.
“It’s a terrible word,” said Kathy Boockvar, a former Pennsylvania secretary of state, “because nobody really knows what it means, but it sounds very bad.” Public meetings about how they’re communicating the changes have included extensive criticism, and a national association of top election officials has publicly pressured the agency to not take their concerns lightly.
“By using plain language and being responsive to the needs of election officials, we hope this clarification will help the public better understand this process and that they will continue to have confidence in the country’s voting systems,” Donald Palmer, one of the four EAC commissioners, said in a statement when asked about the change.“We don’t have a huge microphone,” EAC chair Christy McCormick said in an interview earlier this year, before the agency moved to the “migration” terminology.
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