Survey: Disabled Prefer Absentee Ballots

[Wilms]

The author of this article, published in a small city Upstate New York, has been doing a consistently fine job covering HAVA implementation machinations. So I wrote his boss and told on him. :)

Now you all know I have beat a drum of sorts promoting accessibility, but I read this article and wonder WHO the disabled really are, and what are their REAL needs.

Survey: Disabled prefer absentee ballots

By Tom Grace

Cooperstown News Bureau

04/10/06

People on the Otsego County Board of Elections’ list of voters with permanent medical disabilities want to vote by absentee ballot, not come to the polls — no matter what new and expensive equipment is installed for them.

"We have 263 people on that list, and we sent letters to them to see what they think," Lucinda Jarvis, the county’s Democratic deputy elections commissioner, said Friday.

The result?

"We heard from about 90 percent, and they said they’d much rather continue voting by absentee ballot," Jarvis said. "Some said, ’Please, don’t take our absentee ballots away.’ Others said, ’You can install new equipment, but I’m not going to use it. I want to vote by absentee ballot."’

Jarvis said the letters were sent out to help the county respond to questions posed by the state Board of Elections, which is trying to satisfy federal demands to change the way people in the state vote.

http://www.thedailystar.com/news/stories/2006/04/10/dp4.html

[kster]

1. K&R..nt

[Mnemosyne]

2. k & r n/t

[EFerrari]

3. Oops! There goes that fake argument.

:shrug:

[nicknameless]

5. NFB and AAPD may cheerlead for DREs, but look at the payola they've gotten

from Diebold.

(NFB: National Federation of the Blind and AAPD: the American Association of People with Disabilities)

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002261.htm

What is rarely reported, when folks such as the AAPD's Jim Dickson inevitably show up at these hearings to testify, is that the NFB received a contribution of one million dollars from Diebold and Dickson's AAPD has received at least $26,000 from them as well, as reported by the NY Times and others.

(NOTE: Those spokespeople from disabilities groups not on the Diebold payroll, who don't buy into the tortured notion that they must have paperless touch-screen voting machines in order to protect their civil-rights -- folks like David Dixon of Florida's Handicapped Adults of Volusia County (HAVOC) -- are rarely called to testify at such hearings as those trumped-up by Bob Ney and friends.)

<snip>

[Kurovski]

4. K&R(nt)

[Wilms]

6. .

[diva77]

7. Study from 6.2.00 Americans with disabilities more liberal than norm

Study finds Americans with disabilities more liberal than norm

June 27, 2000 -- A new political-attitude survey of people with disabilities has found them to be more liberal than the general population, as might be expected in a group that often accepts government services, but also reveals a strong streak of skepticism about government, says study author John Gastil, a University of Washington assistant professor of speech communication.

The findings were based on telephone surveys of 302 disabled and 1,485 non-disabled people ages 18-64 in New Mexico, a state whose party affiliations and election results closely mirror the nation's as a whole.

In the surveys, 52 percent of those with disabilities identified themselves as Democrats and 23 percent as Republicans, compared with the general state population surveyed of 43 percent Democrats and 39 percent Republicans.

<snip>

http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting/uwashvotestudy.htm

[Wilms]

8. Oh this is good stuff, diva.

Study Shows People with Disabilities Less Likely to Vote

People with disabilities are about 20 percentage points less likely than those without disabilities to vote, and 10 points less likely to be registered to vote, say researchers who conducted a national random-household telephone survey of 1,240 Americans of voting age after the November, 1998 elections.

snip

People with disabilities are more likely than those without disabilities to have encountered, or expect, difficulties in voting at a polling place. Of those voting in the past ten years, 8% of people with disabilities encountered such problems compared to less than 2% of people without disabilities. Among those not voting within the past ten years, 27% of people with disabilities would expect such problems compared to 4% of people without disabilities.

If people with disabilities voted at the same rate as those without disabilities, there would have been 4.6 million additional voters in 1998, raising the overall turnout rate by 2.5 percentage points.

http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting/votestudy.htm

Ok, so 8% of people with disabilities (compared to 2% of the balance of voters) had trouble. Let's assume that number would go up, even quite a bit, if a lot more people with disabilities (we'll assume with more severe conditions) participated.

So what are the problems they encounter?

More Than 20,000 Polling Places Inaccessible

According to a report by the Federal Election Commission, more than 20,000 polling places across the nation fail to meet the minimal requirements of accessibility -- depriving people with disabilities of their fundamental right to vote.

http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting/pollaccess.htm

Hmmm. Polling Place. Eh? Not machine? Well we'll assume enough machine trouble to recommend the use of Vote-Pad, or a Ballot Marker from Avante or AutoMark if the machine is the trouble.

Voting in America

BY WILLIAM G. STOTHERS

snip

Finally I caught another dedicated citizen headed up the steps and asked her to send out a poll official. In a few minutes, someone appeared, a little chagrined and uncertain. There was no ramp. Could I walk? No. Could they carry me inside? No. Well, they could, they supposed, bring a ballot out to me.

So there I sat in the cold, snow drifting down on me, marking my ballot in the dim light from the house windows and porch. The experience was not one I wished ever to repeat.

snip

Shea Hales went to vote in Bryan, Texas a few years ago, but found no accommodations for wheelchair users. Hales was handed a ballot and directed to a table in the midst of other voters coming and going to their private and secure voting booths.

snip

It gets worse. A study by Kay Schriner of the University of Arkansas noted that 44 states disenfranchise some people with disabilities, using such terms as "idiot" and "insane persons."

Justice For All, a disability advocacy group, says that disabled voters sometimes are harassed, embarrassed or patronized by election officials; face delays in voting because poll workers don't know where the accessible entrance is located; and are unsure if an official's recording of their vote is even accurate.

How can we make this better? Removing barrier from the polling places and providing ballots in alternative formats would be a good start. But let's remember that people with disabilities can be just as disaffected from the political process as anyone else. Add on the problems we expect in trying to get to polls and cast our ballot well, you get the picture.

snip

http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting/votingopinion.htm

Hardly a ringing endorsement for DRE's. Come to think of it, maybe all the attention Polling Places now receive through HAVA is to make sure there's a ramp and a wide-enough door to roll the DRE through. :grr:

Given the previous, what, and whom, is the National Organization on Disability talking about when they say, "most voting systems are inaccessible for people with disabilities".

Accessible Voting Machines

Most voting systems are inaccessible for people with disabilities, says the National Organization on Disability's voting access project. People with disabilities cannot cast a secret ballot with most of these systems.

According to NOD,

* 34% of the voting systems in America are punch card systems
* 18.6% are lever systems
* 27.3 use optical scanners9.1% use DRE (computer) systems
* 1.6% use a paper ballot, and
* 9.1% are a mixture

snip

http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting/votekiosk.htm

It's a cheap article. Are we to assume all "people with disabilities cannot cast a secret ballot with most of these systems", or that they all can use a DRE? Malarky.

We need to remind them that the difficulty being reported seems largely to consist of inaccessible polling places, lack of accessible polling booths, and unhelpful, unknowledgeable, and downright rude and bigotted poll workers. e-voting won't fix any of that.


So, as I said in the OP, I still "wonder WHO the disabled really are, and what are their REAL needs".

I haven't read through this pile, but from the titles, you don't get the sense that they address my question.

Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC)

Public Data Gathering Hearings

September 20, 21, 22, 2004

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland
Panel Testimony: Oral & Written (if submitted)

http://vote.nist.gov/TGDCagendatestim.html

Another survey question could be: "Out of all the people with disabilities that need an accessible device other than Vote-Pad, how many of them aren't concerned if their vote gets stolen?"

[Oak2004]

9. As a non-Diebold- owned disabled person, I'm not surprised

My polling place is, compared to most, pretty accessible.

That is, if you can

A) get up a very steep driveway and push yourself over the threshhold of the "wheelchair accessible" entrance (only true on for me days I'm feeling really strong, or with the help of an aide).

B) can get to the polling place in the first place (transportation being a very big problem for disabled people everywhere.

So, what do you say we take all those HAVA supporters at their word, and take all that HAVA money and pour it into accessible and affordable transportation? Think that will satisfy them?

Yep, HAVA is very concerned about making voting accessible--- to Karl Rove.

[Bill Bored]

10. Another irony is that I've seen a fair number of disabled people

in the Accounting field, esp. in college. I wonder how they would feel about voting systems that can't be independently audited?

Peace.

[IndyOp]

11. Score! HAVA is very concerned about making voting accessible ---

to Karl Rove!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

May I quote you?