Study Shows People with Disabilities Less Likely to VotePeople 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.
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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 InaccessibleAccording 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 AmericaBY WILLIAM G. STOTHERS
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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.
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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.
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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 MachinesMost 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
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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?"