April 07, 2006

Doubts raised about Vote-Pad voting system for disabled voters

"The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors approved this week the allocation of funds necessary to implement a pilot program that will provide assistive devices for blind, deaf and disabled voters aimed at making voting more accessible.

New information has raised doubts whether the county is going down the right path.

The board approved Tuesday the transfer of $3,730 from the general fund to pay for a scaled-back strategy of implementing the Vote-Pad assistive devices.

But at the Humboldt County Elections Advisory Committee meeting Thursday night, elections officials discussed a Wisconsin-based disability advocacy group that is questioning whether the Vote-Pad devices from Vote-Pad Inc. actually comply with federal laws and qualify for local jurisdictions to be reimbursed for federally mandated accessibility requirements.

The Vote-Pad devices, which are similar to an oversized spiral-bound booklet, house the ballots and use several different tactile cues, along with programmable audio tapes, as well as a battery-powered verification tool, to guide disabled voters through the voting process.

Although the Wisconsin State Elections Board approved the Vote-PAD for use in Wisconsin for municipalities that currently hand-count paper ballots, Disability Rights Wisconsin raised concerns in a March 15 letter to the state that the Vote-PAD devices have not been formally tested or federally certified and meet no minimum accessibility standards, according to the letter.

In addition, based on its expert opinion, the group says that Vote-PAD is not accessible to people with a range of and disabilities.

Although it is uncertain how the Wisconsin group’s concerns will affect California’s certification of the devices, Humboldt County Recorder and Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich told the board Tuesday that there were two good reasons for opting for a pilot project instead of a full deployment.

Although the more than $200,000 cost for enough devices for all of the county’s polling sites would likely be reimbursable from federal Help America Vote Act funds through the state, she said that large of an amount of money would gut the county’s contingencies reserves.

In addition, Crnich said Vote-Pad representatives indicated that they were not sure they could get all of the materials prepared in time for the June 6 primary election."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at April 7, 2006 09:10 AM