A good requirements document that exhibits all the desirable qualities that we mention above is very likely to be easy to maintain. We argue that the CoE standards document will be difficult to maintain and extend for two main reasons. Firstly, the faults described above make it difficult to use, and if it is not actually used in the day-to-day process of maintaining e-voting systems then it is likely that no-one will see the need to maintain it. Subsequently -- as it becomes more and more outdated -- the cost of maintenance will rise dramatically.
Secondly, the document is almost impossible to maintain because its structure is such that small advances in technology or small changes to our understanding of e-voting machine requirements will almost certainly require large changes to the document. Furthermore, this will make it very difficult to manage the conflict that arises when manufacturers want to introduce new technology, governments want to adopt it, and voters do not trust it.