Bill enfranchises disabled voters
Dane Smith, Star Tribune
 
March 10, 2004
VOTE10

Blind and disabled Minnesotans could be able by 2006 to cast secret ballots for the first time, on new machines with headphones and other devices that would make it possible for them to vote without help. And for the first time in decades the state could have a uniform voting system, with optiscan voting machines in every polling place in the state, replacing hand-counted paper ballots.

Proposals that would allocate $35 million in federal money for election improvements in Minnesota are moving through the Legislature. Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer tried to put a rush order on those bills Tuesday.

"This is tremendously important legislation," Pawlenty said at a news conference at the State Capitol. "And we have to pass it this year" in order to qualify for federal funding under the Help America Vote Act, he said.

That goal appears to be within reach. Bills similar to those proposed by Republicans Pawlenty and Kiffmeyer already have been passed out of committee in the DFL-controlled Senate. The plans cost the state and local governments little or no money.

And although differences remain, Sen. Chuck Wiger, DFL-North St. Paul, chairman of the Senate Elections Committee, said the need to get funding for a federally mandated law "hardly makes it a candidate for getting lost in the shuffle."

On hand with Pawlenty and Kiffmeyer were advocates for the blind, who gave testimony on the difficulties the blind face in voting.

Currently, the only ways blind people can vote are to bring someone along who will mark their ballot as instructed, or they must depend on election judges to help them. People with paralyzed limbs or other disabilities have similar difficulties that have impeded what they consider to be their right to a secret ballot.

"Many of us have never voted privately in our lives," said Judy Sanders, secretary of the National Federation of the Blind.

The federal legislation was in response to the uproar over "hanging chads" and other irregularities in Florida's election system that were exposed in 2000 in the disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. But the desire to install more reliable equipment and uniform systems eventually expanded to include better access tor those with disabilities by taking advantage of technological advances.

The other key improvement for Minnesota, under the bill Kiffmeyer and House Republicans are backing, would be installation of optiscan machines in every polling place. Optiscan, in use throughout the densely populated metro area, sucks in the paper ballot and counts it. It immediately spits it back if the voter has made a mistake that would invalidate the ballot, such as voting for too many candidates. The paper ballot is kept as a paper trail for contested elections and recounts.

In many outstate precincts, voters mark optiscan ballots in their precincts, but they are counted later at a central location. Voters thus do not get a chance to redo their ballot if mistakes are made and the ballot is rejected. In other rural areas, citizens mark paper ballots that are counted by hand.

Kiffmeyer said the key difference in the Senate bill from her proposal is that the Senate bill would allow counties to keep counting optiscan at central locations, while her proposal would put the machines in every polling place. Both the Kiffmeyer and Senate bills would provide a voting machine for the disabled in all of the state's estimated 3,800 polling places.