"[1] To help establish context for the specifics contained in the XML schemas that make up EML, the Committee also developed a generic end-to-end election process model, initially based on work by election.com, whose CTO chaired the first meetings.
In addition to providing for the orderly transfer of power, it also cements the citizen's trust and confidence in an organization or government when it operates efficiently.
Election data interchange standardization fosters an open marketplace that stimulates cost effective delivery and adoption of new technology without obsolescing existing investments.
The primary function of an electronic voting system is to capture voter preferences reliably and securely and then report results accurately, while meeting legal requirements for privacy.
It is critical that any election system be able to prove that a voter's choice is captured correctly and anonymously, and that the vote is not subject to tampering, manipulation or other sources of undue influence.
These universal democratic principles can be summarized as a list of fundamental requirements, or 'six commandments', for electronic voting systems[citation needed]: EML was developed following these guidelines.
[3] EML utilizes a number of existing standards: Ron Rivest, computer scientist and member of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the US Election Assistance Commission was quoted as saying "EML is an example of the kind of consensus-based, publicly available common format that enables the exchange of electronic records between different components in election systems.