Voter access lagging
Commissioners' promised advisory council nonexistent.

By MARTIN DeAGOSTINO    South Bend Tribune    21 August 2005

Unsteadied by Parkinson's disease, Michael V. Houghton Sr. no longer participates in the binding civic rite of Election Day voting.

He votes absentee instead, because he cannot be assured of negotiable halls, doors and handicapped parking at South Bend's No. 2 fire station on East Marion Street.

"Handicapped-accessible parking would be really a must," he says.

Houghton isn't alone. According to the Governor's Council for People with Disabilities, St. Joseph County is home to about 44,600 people with disabilities, nearly all of voting age.

So far, however, county officials have ignored their needs. They have yet to appoint a local advisory council on polling place accessibility, as they promised to do in a resolution they adopted in March 2004.

They made the promise in return for federal reimbursement for election system upgrades that have cost the county about $1.2 million. Reimbursement through January totaled $746,928.

Although failure to ensure accessibility at all county polling places by Jan. 1 carries the threat of a significant financial penalty, the Board of County Commissioners seems disinclined to act.

"It's not our highest priority right now," said Commissioner Mark Dobson, R-District 1. "We've got to cut $6 million from our (2006) budget."

As recommended by County Clerk Rita Glenn, the budget may include several hundred thousand dollars to buy voting machines for blind and visually impaired people, as federal law requires. But there, too, commissioners seem inclined to fight the rule instead of fix the problem.

"The visually impaired have other voting alternatives," Dobson said.

Dobson is technically correct. Like other people with disabilities, they can vote absentee or through the county election board's traveling board, which will visit their homes. They can even seek help at the polls from nearly anyone of their choosing, including sworn election officials.

But that's neither the letter nor spirit of a recent federal law known as HAVA, or Help America Vote Act. Passed after the controversial 2000 presidential election, the law seeks no less than full accessibility at all polling places, the elimination of obsolete voting systems, and the use of statewide computerized voter registration lists.

Implementation is under way in every state, with limited financial help from Congress.

That money has helped St. Joseph County replace lever voting machines with optical scan machines, and additional money is available to address access issues.

Indiana spent $60,000 last year to survey polling sites for accessibility and found that only 6 percent were fully accessible.

"That's the bad news," said Mike Foddrill, special projects coordinator for Count Us IN, which conducted the survey for the Governor's Council for People with Disabilities. "The good news is that most of the problems we found were relatively minor."

Consider South Bend's No. 2 fire station. According to Count Us IN, the site is deficient in six areas, including a lack of accessible parking and unwieldy hardware on doors.

Easy remedies are available, according to Foddrill and others, yet a single deficiency equals noncompliance under federal law. "Our point is, a polling place can't be 70 percent accessible," Foddrill said. "It's either accessible or not."

That has frustrated local election officials who fear the costs and logistics of upgrades, and some have lashed out at Count Us IN.

"They did a lousy job on that (survey)," said Dobson, who cited relatively new elementary schools that were deemed nonaccessible.

Indiana's chief election official, Secretary of State Todd Rokita, has emphasized degrees of compliance instead of all-or-nothing categories. By his count, more than 90 percent of state polling sites meet 70 percent of the applicable criteria, while 43 percent meet 90 percent of the criteria.

"Very few have major problems," said Joe McLain, Indiana's HAVA administrator.

Yet the sheer number of minor problems is daunting. The Count Us IN survey documents 66 pages of deficiencies at St. Joseph County polling sites, and similar lists are available for every Indiana county.

To address those problems by Jan. 1, or even by a "fudge" date of next March, counties must act quickly to plan, coordinate and budget for the fix.

Some state help is available, including bulk purchasing of access equipment such as handicap signs, temporary threshold ramps and door hardware. Only $500,000 is available for such purchases, McLain said, which may leave some counties short of their investment.

Even then, disability rights activists and state officials acknowledge that simple fixes won't apply to every polling place. Some may require costly physical modifications or relocation to more suitable facilities.

Yet McLain said a timely response to access problems large or small will require the active involvement of local advisory councils, and he urged St. Joseph County to form one quickly.

Whether that happens soon enough to help Michael Houghton, no one can say. But he said voting with his wife and fellow citizens at the No. 2 fire station is something he'd like to do.

"Just, you know, because it's kind of a tradition."