Voting for access
 
By Amaris Elliott-Engel / The Citizen    04 June 2005

AUBURN - When Sally Johnston and fellow disability rights advocates faced too many stairs to readily access Onondaga County Legislature or Syracuse Common Council meetings, they held a disability awareness day - inviting county legislators and councilors to spend a day in wheelchairs.

Those leaders had to face being carried up the stairs - and the fear of being ped - to get to the meetings, the same plight Johnston and others had to endure. Johnston spoke of her experience at a workshop during the Options for Independence's annual conference held Friday at Auburn's Holiday Inn.

Such advocacy helped get those leaders to understand the importance of having access to public buildings for people with disabilities - before the American Disabilities Act of 1990 legally required it, Johnston said. Today, advocates are pushing for similar progress when it comes to voting.

The 1980s and 1990s disability rights campaign for better physical access to public space cited the importance of people with disabilities being democratically involved, and current disability rights advocacy is looking at the best way to implement the Help America Vote Act of 2002. HAVA is offering reimbursement to states if they upgrade voting machines, including improved disability access, by the November 2006 election.
    

Larry Tonelli, a senior sales executive for voting machine company Sequoia Voting Systems, demonstrated two different types of voting machines to the Options for Independence conference attendees.

Besides an optical voting machine that electronically reads paper ballots, Tonelli demonstrated a touch-screen voting machine called a "direct recording electronic" device.

Tonelli said the DREs have the advantage in New York because they have a similar layout to the long-standing lever machines, but have a bigger screen layout, the ability to be lowered to the level of a wheelchair-bound voter, a sip-and-puff option so voters can use their mouths to vote, and a receipt printed out every time someone votes.

James Kibbe, an Options for Independence board member, tried out Tonelli's DRE, and said he would be able to use the machine to vote as a quadriplegic and double amputee.

Kibbe thinks equipment like the DREs will encourage people with disabilities to vote and will eliminate misunderstandings, or undue influence, by a caretaker over a disabled person's choices.

Such equipment "gives that individual just that little bit more (to pursue) the freedom of democracy, and it's a privacy issue, too. They can participate in what a normal individual takes for granted," Kibbe said.

Options for Independence board president Betty Palega, who is legally blind, also said she could use the large-print screen of the DRE as long as she used her magnifier. Palega said it was important that DREs print out copies of votes, which would eliminate a 2000 Florida or 2004 Ohio ballot fiasco occurring in New York.

Palega and Options for Independence executive director Guy Cosentino said they hope the same voting system is ed for every county in New York to ensure voters won't be confused by different voting machine technology if they move to a different county.

State Senate Democratic Minority Leader David Paterson, the keynote speaker for the conference, said state leaders are seeking input on what voting machines to acquire from people with disabilities. Paterson said he has heard a a recent preference for the DREs over the optical scan voting machines.

Paterson said in his speech that much remains to be done to improve disability rights.

Less than 10 percent of people who are deaf are working, only 29 percent of those who are blind have a job and less than half of those who have an ambulatory disability are employed, Paterson said.

But despite the work left to be done, many of the conference attendees were celebrating the chance to get information and gather with 127 people who care about the same cause, Palega and Cosentino said.