There are three significant differences between the approaches taken towards e-voting standards in the CoE and at a Federal level in the US: timing, takeup and size.
The first two are naturally related. The US has had (nominally) voluntary standards since 1990. However, many states have passed laws requiring conformance [16]. The CoE standards remain voluntary. In fact, to our knowledge, the ``certification processes'' called for in standard 111 have not yet been developed in any European country . No doubt this is largely due to the fact that the document is less than two years old. It is likely that this is also influenced by the difficulties of certification against the standards, discussed below, and by the fact that e-voting remains less widespread in Europe than in the US. Where e-voting is used in Europe it is generally on an experimental or pilot basis.
Comprising two volumes of 12 and 10 documents respectively, totalling almost 300 pages, the latest US standards (developed by the Election Assistance Commission - EAC) are clearly much larger than the document produced by the CoE, which totals 21 pages (the explanatory memorandum is a further 67 pages long). As might be expected, considering the difference in size, the American standards aim for a much finer granularity than the CoE standards do. For example: whereas the CoE standards make a passing reference to testing in standard 111, the EAC standards list and elaborate on five categories of testing.