# Voluntary Voting System Guidelines The federal technical standards that voting equipment is tested against, issued by the [[Election Assistance Commission]] under the [[Help America Vote Act]]. The EAC accredits the testing laboratories and certifies whether a system meets the standard; the current generation is **VVSG 2.0**, adopted in 2021. **The word "voluntary" is doing real work.** No federal law requires any state to buy certified equipment. The guidelines bind because most states have written the federal certification into their own procurement statutes or administrative rules — so a nominally optional standard functions as a national floor by fifty separate state decisions, and could in principle be abandoned the same way. Adopting or amending the VVSG requires an affirmative vote of at least three EAC commissioners. Since the commission was left with **zero commissioners in July 2026**, career staff may continue certifying equipment against the existing VVSG 2.0 but cannot issue a revised standard, and cannot hear a formal decertification appeal. The standard is therefore frozen in place: it cannot be weakened and it cannot be updated. ## See Also - [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] — the counting process the guidelines govern, and the 2002 statutory cross-reference that binds where the guidelines do not - [[How a Voting System Is Certified and Decertified]] — the full pipeline this standard sits inside, with the four gates that require three commissioners marked - [[Technical Guidelines Development Committee]] — the body that drafts it; [[National Institute of Standards and Technology]] chairs - [[Election Assistance Commission]] · [[Help America Vote Act]] - [[State Election Administration Tree]] — where equipment certification sits in the structure - [[Dominion Voting Systems]]