The system must be able to support the organization and carrying out of elections at national, state, and local levels.
The system must maintain the traditional voting guarantees that support stable democratic governments:
It must allows voters to register and vote online; it must maintain the normal prohibitions against one person voting more than once in any single election; it must maintain the normal prohibition against non-registered voters voting in any elections; it must also maintain the normal prohibition of any one voter being registered in more than one place.
The system must allow novel forms of election to occur... for example, we will want to have elections as we do now (meaning all voting in a single day) but we also will want to have elections that occur over longer periods of time... weeks, perhaps months. We will want to allow flexible voting policies... for example, we may want an election where once your vote is cast it is irrevocable; we may also want elections where a voter can log on and change his/her vote as many times as desired... as long as it is prior to the end of the election (an anonymity is maintained).
Other possible novel election forms include electorates that are not based in geographical regions, but some other demographics characteristic (such as people between ages 40 and 59, or people belonging to some organization like AAA). It can also include novel vote casting strategies, like the voter gets 100 votes to allocate to the candidates as he/she sees fit (for example).
We want the system to have an information structure to make it easy for the voters to get at least candidate statements, party platforms, information about voting process, and the law of the land.
The system must support the gathering of statistical information, perhaps at several levels. We want the voters to be able to see results (and perhaps do some basic analyses); we also want "experts" or officials to be able to get access to the vote data in ways perhaps not generally open to the public. This would include access to historical data from past elections.
