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wo obvious requirements for a fair
election are that voters should have complete confidence about their
ballots' being counted accurately and that everyone, including the
disabled, should have access to the polls. It is hard to imagine
advocates for those two goals fighting, but lately that seems to be
what's happening.
The issue is whether electronic voting machines should provide a
"paper trail" — receipts that could be checked by voters and used in
recounts. There has been a rising demand around the country for this
critical safeguard, but the move to provide paper trails is being
fought by a handful of influential advocates for the disabled, who
complain that requiring verifiable paper records will slow the
adoption of accessible electronic voting machines.
The National Federation of the Blind, for instance, has been
championing controversial voting machines that do not provide a
paper trail. It has attested not only to the machines'
accessibility, but also to their security and accuracy — neither of
which is within the federation's areas of expertise. What's even
more troubling is that the group has accepted a $1 million gift for
a new training institute from Diebold, the machines' manufacturer,
which put the testimonial on its Web site. The federation stands by
its "complete confidence" in Diebold even though several recent
studies have raised serious doubts about the company, and California
has banned more than 14,000 Diebold machines from being used this
November because of doubts about their reliability.
Disability-rights groups have had an outsized influence on the
debate despite their general lack of background on security issues.
The League of Women Voters has been a leading opponent of
voter-verifiable paper trails, in part because it has accepted the
disability groups' arguments.
Last year, the American Association of People With Disabilities
gave its Justice for All award to Senator Christopher Dodd, an
author of the Help America Vote Act, a post-2000 election reform
law. Mr. Dodd, who has actively opposed paper trails, then appointed
Jim Dickson, an association official, to the Board of Advisors of
the Election Assistance Commission, where he will be in a good
position to oppose paper trails at the federal level. In California,
a group of disabled voters recently sued to undo the secretary of
state's order decertifying the electronic voting machines that his
office had found to be unreliable.
Some supporters of voter-verifiable paper trails question whether
disability-rights groups have gotten too close to voting machine
manufacturers. Besides the donation by Diebold to the National
Federation of the Blind, there have been other gifts. According to
Mr. Dickson, the American Association of People with Disabilities
has received $26,000 from voting machine companies this year.
The real issue, though, is that disability-rights groups have
been clouding the voting machine debate by suggesting that the
nation must choose between accessible voting and verifiable
voting.
It is well within the realm of technology to produce machines
that meet both needs. Meanwhile, it would be a grave mistake for
election officials to rush to spend millions of dollars on paperless
electronic voting machines that may quickly become obsolete.
Disabled people have historically faced great obstacles at the
polls, and disability-rights groups are right to work zealously for
accessible voting. But they should not overlook the fact that the
disabled, like all Americans, also have an interest in ensuring that
their elections are not stolen.