What is a soft prototype?
In short, a “soft prototype” is one that I can develop using minimal financial resources, i.e. a bootstrap to lift up the enterprise. I envision a CD or downloadable ISO image that can boot an ordinary PC into a mock voting machine. The soft prototype will be made available to researchers, elections officials and activists to put it through its paces, primarily as a promotional device (quality assurance will be achieved by in house testing rather than relying on the public).
Since the soft prototype must run on various arbitrary hardware platforms, not all of the hardware components in the final product can be assumed to exist. In particular it will not use a hardware security module for cryptographic algorithms or key storage. Any security analysis of the prototype should understand that the final version will use a FIPS 140-2 certified cryptographic module in accordance with the requirements in VVSG08.