This article appeared in the Dominion Post Newspaper (Morgantown, West
Virginia) on April 30, 2002.

Device makes voting a touch easier for blind

Bob Gay/The Dominion Post

Eighty-year-old Toni Cowsert, who is blind, smiles as she prepares to vote
using the new electronic touch-screen voting machines at the absentee
polling
place, 180 Chancery Row.

BY EVELYN RYAN

The Dominion Post

Toni Cowsert sums everything up with just one word -- motivation.

That's what made Monday a special day for her.

Monday was the day she went to the polls and voted absentee for the May 12
primary.

Cowsert, who will be 80 in May, has been blind since age 1. She's been
voting since she was 21. "I've never missed," she said, laughing.

But after moving back to the Morgantown area in 1979, she stopped voting in
polling places because "it wasn't private enough," Cowsert said. "I didn't
like
it."

That's because a blind voter has to have a companion to read the ballot and
record the vote. It's all done by someone else.

Cowsert, who is fiercely independent, wanted to be the one who marked the X
and dropped the ballot in the ballot box.

Along came Monongalia County's new absentee voting system -- iVotronic
electronic touch-screen computers -- complete with the ability to "read" the
ballot
to those who need special help.

Monday, Deputy County Clerk Betty Tennant brought Cowsert to 180 Chancery
Row, to be among the first to vote on the new system.

"It was wonderful," Cowsert said. "It was fun. Once I got onto it, it was
easy."

The spoken ballot module didn't arrive until just before noon Monday, so the
circuit clerk's office didn't have a chance to walk through the process
before
absentee voting began. Cowsert and the poll clerks learned the process
together. She donned a headset to listen to the list of races and
candidates.

"It took a little while to understand" the process, she admitted. "A couple
of times I did something I didn't want to do, and it took awhile before I
realized
you could erase it. I went and corrected the things that I knew I had gotten
wrong."

Several people who voted absentee Monday praised the way the iVotronic
allows you to correct a wrong vote with a simple touch.

This isn't Cowsert's first experience with voting machines. She earned her
master's degree in social work at the University of Pennsylvania at
Philadephia
-- then spent 35 years working in the Philadelphia area.

In Philadephia, she voted using lever machines, large voting machines with a
lever beside the name of each candidate. You vote by moving the lever of the
candidate you want to support. Opening the curtains locks the vote in.
Another lever allows you to vote a straight ticket.

"You know, with technology I don't feel blind at all," she said. "I have all
kinds of technology, all kinds of machines to help me. I don't even think
about
it."

Cowsert was excited when she was first told about the new voting machines.
She's looking forward to voting on them in November.

"I thought, well, I'm going to do something different. I'm going to see
something new. I love new experiences," she said.

"I'm very highly motivated. Motivation is the key to involvement. I'm 80 and
I'm still never going to be too old to stop being involved.

"Technology is just so wonderful for blind people," Cowsert reflected,
"because it makes you feel equal with the sighted."


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