Hi, Mary,
Here's my take on the voting issue, especially as it related to my latest
experiences in the Atlanta area.  My only disability that would affect my
ability to cast a fully-independent "secret" ballot, is a total loss of
vision.  I have yet to even hear of a proposed voting system that would
permit a totally blind person to prepare and cast a fully-independent
ballot.  From what I know of how most public officials responsible for
such things regard blind people, on the rare occasions they bother to
think about us at all, if they did find a voting technology that was
totally accessible and independently usable by a totally blind person,
they would probably buy only one and put it in the precinct closest to
whatever "rehab" type agency deals with blind people.  In Atlanta, that
would be the Center for the Visually Impaired.  Of course, I can only vote
in the one precinct listed on my voter registration card.
That precinct votes in a church, with stepts to go up from the outside,
and steps to go down on the inside.  Wheelchairs would have probs in that
precinct.

We used the folded paper ballot sheet with the punch card system where you
push the plastic-tipped stylus through the holes and knock out those
famous "chads" we heard so much about.

Since 1994 I have had a policy about getting to the polls to vote and
getting assistance with my ballot, since I know that probably not in my
lifetime will I ever get to do what most Americans can take for granted
and can have done for the past 80-120 years, cast a "secret" ballot.

A few days before the election, I call the headquarters of the political
parties in my area and ask if they have volunteers who can take people
with disabilities to the polls and help them vote.  In general elections,
I call on the Democrats one election term, and on the Republicans the
next.  For primaries, since Georgia is a "closed" primary state, I call on
the party in who's primary I have decided I wish to vote.

I had no problems with the voting.  The lines were long and the process
took over two hours.  The Republican volunteer who gave the three of us
the ride to the polling place was an attorney, so he was a sharp fellow.
We were told that poll workers were not allowed to assist a voter in the
booth, and, of course, poll watchers and monitors from the political
parties are not allowed to assist voters in the booth, for reasons that
should be obvious.  The volunteer, who was not an official party worker of
any sort, helped me line the ballot up in the aparatus, read the candidate
list, and helped me figured out the layout of the ballot.  Was the race
listed in ascending alphabetical order by party name, or by candidate's
last name?  He would read the list, top to bottom along the punch column,
and then I manipulated the stylus and punched where I wanted.  If I needed
to write-in, I had to get the volunteer to do that.

In the 1998 election term, I called on the Democrats for a volunteer and
that person was a recently retired high-school Social Studies teacher.
Other times, I have been able to get friends who vote in the same precinct
to help with the vote, and one election term, I voted by absentee ballot
and, of course, had to have help filling it out.

In all these cases, I was able to vote, and was able to ensure that my
vote was for those candidates of my choice.

In none of those cases can I say that I cast an independent vote
unassisted, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that I
cast a secret ballot.  For those of us who can go to the polls and vote
with no problems any greater than those experienced by the overwhelming
majority of voters, our biggest gripe with the system is that part about
having to have help in the booth whether we push buttons, pull levers,
punch cards, fill in checkboxes on paper, or scrawl across an electronic
screen.  We are denied what most Americans have long since come to expect
as something close to a constitutional right, that of casting an
independent and secret vote without the possibility of it being influenced
or manipulated by others, right from the point of the actually ballotng
process.

Every time I call on a party for volunteer assistance to get to the
polling place and for help with the ballot, I always warn the volunteer
that Yes, I will probably vote for some candidates from his/her party, but
I will also vote for candidates of one or more of the other parties, plus
some independents, since I am an independent and never vote anybody's
party line, with the exception of a specific party primary.  Even then, I
may not vote in the primaries of the same party every election term.

So, were there problems, beyond my bitch about that denial of a secret
ballot?  For me, no, for others, definitely yes.  What happened in Florida
happened in every state in the union.  In the very county where Vice
President Gore voted, something like 15,000 ballots were tossed out for
being spoiled, or otherwise incorrectly cast, and that county was
considered a heavily Republican-majority area.  It was estimated by more
than one source that in any given general election in a presidential
election year, somewhere between 1 and 2 percent of the ballots cast get
tossed out and not counted for one reason or another.  Estimates are that
at least two-million ballots were tossed out nationwide in the 2000
general election in the presidential race.  Unless somebody goes over all
two-million of those with a fine-toothed comb reminiscent to the
examination of the Florida vote, it is not possible to say one way or
another which of those two candidates "won" the "popular" vote.

I don't expect to be able to vote an independently-cast "secret" ballot in
either 2002 or 2004.  The aparatus might look different and be handled
differently, but I'll probably still be going with a friend, or if I can't
arrange that, I'll be calling one of the parties and asking for a
volunteer.  If it's at least as good as it was in 2000, I will be able to
participate in the process, and will cast a vote.  I think the absentee
ballot option is the least independent option for a totally blind person,
since you have to get some sighted person to fill in the whole thing for
you, and you won't be able to verify your options at all.  You'll have to
trust the filler-in to actually mark the choices you want.
The Florida experience should have taught us about how lightly our elected
officials responsible for the balloting process in this country have come
to esteem their jobs in the last several years.  Election Day should be a
national holiday, with the same importance as Independence Day or
Thanksgiving Day.  Polls should be open longer, or there should be more of
them so they can accommodate more people at one time.  All the aparatus
should be accessible to all voters to cast an independent unassisted
ballot.  Of course, I am aware that if you build an "idiot-proof" device,
along will come "improved" idiots.  There will always be people who will
find a way to do it wrong and screw up their ballot.  Even if the machine
is designed to hold them captive until they get it right, they'll still
need to yell for help to get out of the jam.  A lot of the problems people
experienced in the 2000 elections were simply because they refused to
follow any instructions, no matter how simple they were, or how patiently
they were explained.  I saw more than one person try to vote in the
precinct where I voted and when they were told that they were not
registered at that location, but they needed to go to location X over on
Y, they got angry and bitched that they were being denied their franchise,
simply because they should be allowed to vote wherever the hell they
wanted to, not where they were registered.  The news media later got some
of those people claiming that they were turned away because of their race,
even if the poll workers who "turned them away" were of the same race or
ethnicity as the complainers.  I saw at least three of those in the two
hours I was in the lines and waiting at the rather small precinct where I
voted, and those poll workers mostly seemed to be smart, knowing what they
were doing, and they were not rude or ugly to the voters waiting in the
lines.  I was there late morning, to about lunch time.  Yes, some people
did experience real problems.  There were registrations, mostly filed at
the last minute, that did not get processed in time for the people to be
able to vote, but, then again, who told them they should consider it so
lightly as to wait until the last minute to register?  If it's important
enough to do at all, it is important enough to do it right insomuch as it
is possible to do it right.


Brent Reynolds
Random Access Internet Shell account
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