Making Voting Accessible for All

[Wilms]

Making Voting Accessible for All

by Dan Tokaji

Thursday, April 20

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Now, People for the American Way has filed a lawsuit alleging among other things that the machines to be used in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania don't comply with HAVA. The complaint may be found here. Allegheny County is planning to use the ES&S iVotronic system, which the complaint alleges to have been chosen after plans to obtain machines made by the two other big voting machine vendors (Diebold and Sequoia) were scrapped. One of the allegations in the complaint is that the ES&S system isn't accessible to all disabled voters, and thus doesn't comply with HAVA. Although the system accommodates people with visual impairments, plaintiffs allege that it doesn't accommodate people with manual dexterity impairments.

snip

The case is nevertheless significant, in that it raises the issue of whether an electronic voting machine is accessible, if it doesn't allow private and independent voting by people with manual dexterity impairments. It also raises the factual issue of how well the electronic voting machines being used really do accommodate people with non-visual disabilities. State and local election offcials throughout the country are thus likely to be eyeing this litigation nervously in weeks and months to come. Could it be that there's no system out there that fully accommodates people with disabilities, in the manner that HAVA requires? If that's the case, then what are counties supposed to do? And what are courts supposed to do?

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http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/blogs/tokaji/2006/04/making-voting-accessible-for-all.html

Good question.

[shraby]

1. Paper and pen work just fine.

[Trajan]

2. I have NO PROBLEM ...

Using EVERY sort of device to accomodate EVERY possible mode of impairment: EVERY tool or sensing device that can be dreamed of CAN and SHOULD be used to mark a ballot with the intent of the voter ....

But ONCE that ballot has been marked, by any means possible, then the COUNTING of the ballots, whether marked by impaired voters or by ALL the rest of voters, should be OPEN and FREELY OBSERVED ... and to count them by hand, if necessary, to maintain the integrity of the election process ....

MARKING ballots is a completely different question than COUNTING ballots, but they want to confuse voters so they dont understand the difference ....

THEY say we MUST have these systems to help impaired voters vote: But they could just as easily have produced 'easy to use' ballot marking devices to help impaired voters vote, but instead they chose to use HIDDEN hardware designs and software codes that completely obscure the vote COUNTING process, which is the real reason they wish to use Diebold, ES&S hardware .... ONLY to disguise election fraud .....

Fraud from the comfort and privacy of a senate backroom, or a White House basement office .... THAT is what they want: Remote ballot manipulation ....

We could easily accomodate impaired voters WITHOUT comprimising the election process ....

[hedda_foil]

3. No Dan, it could NOT be that there's no such system out there.

There are several such systems (like the AutoMARK). But ES&S, Sequoia and Diebold's DREs aren't compliant.

[Wilms]

4. Then, perhaps, I've taken it too far.

I have imagined that there is no one machine that would accommodate ALL disabilities and that there may be no machine that would cover certain disabilities.

I've felt on one hand it to be nit-picky to say so, but that it's not accurate for proponents of Diebold or Sequoia touch-screens, or even AutoMark, to claim any of those machines would accommodate ALL disabilities.

Are you saying that the AutoMark would enfranchise people with a greater range of disabilities? If so, that would be fair (and probably a lot more accurate) to highlight.

For Dan Tokaji, a big supporter of paper-less DRE's, to question the raison d'être of the deployment of all these so-called accessible voting technologies was the real "Remarkable Turn in the Paper Trail Debate". That's why I was very surprised to see this from him.