The group has warmed up after lunch; I wonder if they spiked the soda.

We’re in the midst of a long drawn out conversation about interstate interoperability standards and voter fraud. But I have to admit that the conversation is a bit frustrating to me. There is a such a diverse group of participants–usually a positive–that it is distracting from a productive conversation.

There seems to be little awareness of the data standard that had been released by Neil McClure. And many participants don’t seem to understand the difference between making a national repository of voter registration information versus just making a portion of your state file available to other states, via a standardized data exchange format.

And then there is the always controversial spectre of “fraud.” I find myself leaning over to my colleague from Pew, David Becker, and we have the same reaction: “What do you mean by ‘fraud.”

There are many different kinds of voter fraud, and simply asking “How much fraud is there” is not very helpful.