BBV - Blind voters rip e-machines

[Kelvin Mace]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/8673336.htm

Blind voters rip e-machines
THEY SAY DEFECTS THWART GOAL OF ENFRANCHISING SIGHT-IMPAIRED

By Elise Ackerman

Mercury News

Disabled-rights groups have been some of the strongest supporters of electronic voting, but blind voters in Santa Clara County said the machines performed poorly and were anything but user-friendly in the March election.

"Very few of our members were able to vote privately, independently, despite Santa Clara County's supposed `accessible' touch screens," Dawn Wilcox, president of the Silicon Valley Council of the Blind, wrote in a letter to the registrar of voters after the March primary. "I feel this is an unacceptable state of affairs."

*snip*

Among the criticism provided by voters was poor sound quality, delayed response time and braille that was positioned so awkwardly it could only be read upside down. Chen, the college professor, also said the audio message required blind voters to press a yellow button. "Yellow means nothing to me," Chen said.

"I personally want them to be decertified for this election," Runyan said. "We need to make a strong statement that all these machines need to be redesigned on the user interface side. We've got a mistake here."


David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org
http://www.blackboxvoting.com

[Tellurian]

1. I Love it when the X-Factor comes into play...and wins! nt

[MGKrebs]

2. If you are blind, push the yellow button???

Oh please.

We are trusting THESE people with our elections!??

[Merlin]

3. Disabled group also BLOCKING BBV safeguards (verified printout or VVPB)

The BBV thing has been knocked back on its heels and we need to help resuscitate it if we want to keep the Bushies from stealing the '04 election.

For one, the League of Women Voters has incredibly come out AGAINST the safeguard of requiring printouts put in a lockbox and used for random machine audits (a series of proposals known generally as VVPB or Voter Verified Paper Ballots) (a/k/a VVPT -...Paper Trail).

The main stated reason why they have done so is because of the arguments of the AAPD, claiming to represent the blind.

The two links below serve to explain:


LWV - Where We Stand

http://www.lwv.org/join/elections/hava_dre-vvpt.html

...the League does not support proposals for a new requirement for paper-based voter verification – the voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) system that would require ..Electronic... voting machines to provide an individual paper confirmation for each ballot for each voter to verify.

A VVPT requirement undermines voting access for people with disabilities or limited English proficiency, raises costs, fails to guarantee security, unnecessarily complicates the voting process, undermines federal certification standards, and slows the replacement of outdated voting machines.
...


NOTE: That's all nonsense. I am astounded the LWV is taking this position!


Wired
12/16/03

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61617,00.htmltw=wn_story_related
...
At that meeting (of the Association for Computing Machinery) in Denver, Jim Dickson of the American Association of People with Disabilities disrupted proceedings with a group of demonstrators who chanted about civil liberties and denounced proponents of a voter-verifiable paper audit trail, angering members of the audience who shouted back at them.

At the NIST conference, Dickson and other speakers were given time to air their concerns.

Dickson, a strong opponent of voter-verified paper trails, which are printed slips generated after a person uses a computerized voting machine, said blind voters wouldn't be able to read the paper receipts. Voting-machine makers, however, say text-to-speech software and a set of earphones would allow visually impaired voters to know what's on their receipts.

[nofurylike]

4. please write those crucial thoughts to them?

League of Women's Voters

http://www.lwv.org/forms/contactus.cfm

1730 M Street NW, Suite 1000,
Washington, DC 20036-4508
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

thank you, all!


peace