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TrustTheVote-Project / horatio-client

A client for an absentee ballot request form.
MIT License
2 stars 4 forks source link

Figure out a legally-acceptable alternative to a signature #6

Closed waldoj closed 9 years ago

waldoj commented 9 years ago

Per the minutes of a VA SBE meeting, registrars are "to accept electronic signatures on Absentee Ballot Applications so long as the applicant was required to affirmatively check a box confirming acknowledgement of the Affirmation Statement which appears on the Absentee Ballot Application and the completed Absentee Ballot Application includes a disclaimer indicating that it includes an electronic signature."

This means that there needs to be a checkbox that says:

I swear/affirm, under felony penalty for making willfully false material statements, that by pressing the Submit button and submitting this information that (1) the information I have provided on this form is true, (2) I am not requesting a ballot or voting in any other jurisdiction in the U.S., except the jurisdiction to which this application relates, and (3) that I am the person named in this absentee application.

I'm not sure what it means to "include a disclaimer" on an electronic copy of this data. My guess is that it's meaningless, because electronic data can only be signed electronically. I suspect that applies only when turning this data back into a form (e.g., generating a PDF).

waldoj commented 9 years ago

How does this guidance apply to the "Assistant’s Statement/Info" portion of the form? That also has a signature field, meant to be signed by a different party entirely. We'd need to use different language, of course.

waldoj commented 9 years ago

I switched to the above text for the applicant signature with commit c50d872 on the server.

zakgreene commented 9 years ago

How does this guidance apply to the "Assistant’s Statement/Info" portion of the form? That also has a signature field, meant to be signed by a different party entirely. We'd need to use different language, of course.

There is already a "swear/affirm" statement on the PDF form above that signature. I'm not sure if it'd need to be changed to include language about the Submit button, like the applicant signature, so for now I'm just including it as is.

zakgreene commented 9 years ago

Also, do we need the date on the final signature?

waldoj commented 9 years ago

Yup. I've defined that as a date-time element, so that we can capture the time of the signature, too, although only MM/DD/YY will go on the PDF. Here's the JSON for a sample completed absentee ballot application, which might be useful for reference.

waldoj commented 9 years ago

I'm closing this as substantially resolved, and opened #15 to handle the question of the assistant's signature.