PRESS 05142006 [HART] Editorial: Ballots must favor disabled voters

["Al Kolwicz" <alkolwicz@xxxxxxxxx>]

See below,

 

Anybody up for Letters to the Editor?

 

Al

 

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From: Al Kolwicz [mailto:alkolwicz@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2006 11:19 AM
To: Al Kolwicz
Subject: PRESS 05142006 [HART] Editorial: Ballots must favor disabled voters

 

http://www.longmontfyi.com/opinion.asp

 

Publish Date: 5/14/2006

Ballots must favor disabled voters

There’s a battle brewing over Boulder County’s selection of voting equipment that will be accessible to disabled voters. Let’s hope that those voters aren’t the losers.

To meet federal requirements for poll voting accessibility this year, commissioners last week approved a $1.7 million lease of equipment by Hart Intercivic. Hart is the maker of the county’s current voting system, which was the focus of a similar battle in 2004. Ballot printing errors created havoc in the fall elections of that year.

At issue is privacy, and that is exactly why Al Kolwicz — Boulder’s archenemy of digital voting — again is battling the county over its choice of equipment.

The design of the Hart’s accessible system allows blind, hearing-impaired and paraplegic voters to cast votes. Those votes are recorded digitally, and the machine provides audio verification for blind voters and prints a “receipt” of the vote that the sighted voters can view. This record of the vote is printed on a roll of paper that is kept by election officials. Kolwicz’s concern is that because this roll has a sequential order of votes, that the identity of voters can be determined by comparing the sequence on the paper to the sequence of voters.

Kolwicz’s preference: ballots that can be fed into a voting machine that is disabled-accessible and receives the imprint of the voter’s choices. The machine would verify those choices, then the voter could place the ballot into a ballot box as the only record of the vote. No digital record. No chance that a voter’s ballot could be incorrectly recorded.

His concern about privacy and accuracy is reasonable, but even this solution risks leaving paraplegics unable to vote on their own. Kolwicz says that it may be possible to mechanically move the ballot through the process.

The next stop in this process is the secretary of state, whom Kolwicz has asked to decertify the equipment that Boulder County plans to use.

If Gigi Dennis sides with Kolwicz, Boulder County, and perhaps other counties, would have to find replacement systems before the August primary.

That’s troubling.

The Legal Center for People with Disabilities and Older People has announced its support for the Hart system. Kolwicz makes it clear that he is not a spokesman for disabled voters.

While accurate counts and privacy at the polls must be maintained, the state cannot allow this late challenge to spoil what may be the first opportunity for many Coloradans to cast their votes independently.