Reposted with Permission
Action Alert: Protect Accessible Voting!!
Contact your members of Congress while they are home between now
and April 13 and tell them to protect our right to vote privately
and independently in next year’s Presidential elections. The
leading election reform bill, introduced by Congressman Rush Holt,
H.R. 811, includes an unrealistic deadline for every voting
machine to produce an accessible voter-verifiable paper ballot by
next year. Tell your Congressional representatives to move that
paper ballot deadline back to allow time for new voting systems to
be developed, certified for use in elections, and funded.
When the Holt bill’s paper ballot requirement is coupled with the
access requirements of the Help America Vote Act, it will require
election officials to purchase technology that does not currently
exist. The Holt bill seems to acknowledge this problem because it
requires the federal government to study how best to make it’s
voter-verifiable paper ballots accessible to voters with a wide
range of disabilities, and requires the government to report on
its findings by January of 2010. In the absence of these findings,
how can election officials move forward with a 2008 deadline for
accessible paper ballots?
BACKGROUND
Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced H.R. 811, the Voter
Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act on February 7 of this
year. This bill currently has 200 cosponsors and bipartisan
support. The bill is expected to pass the House, and is considered
the leading election reform vehicle that is moving in this
Congress. It was slated for mark up in the House Committee on
Administration last Thursday, but the mark up was postponed at the
last minute. We anticipate that the bill will be marked up and
sent to the House floor for a vote soon after Congress returns
from their current recess. Once it passes the House, we anticipate
that the Senate will want to act quickly on a parallel piece of
legislation.
The Holt bill would amend the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by
making a number of major changes to the nation’s elections system.
It requires all changes to be in place for the primaries in next
year’s presidential election. If enacted into law, the Holt bill
will require that all polling places use equipment in the 2008
presidential race that can produce an accessible, voter-verifiable
paper ballot. The bill includes other requirements that would
substantially change election practices, but for purposes of this
alert we are focusing on the paper ballot requirement.
Because of the requirement in the 2002 Help America Vote Act that
all polling places have at least one accessible voting machine by
2006, we have seen significant improvement in voting accessibility
since the 2002 elections. AAPD does not want to move backward on
accessibility, and we have been advocating along with other
disability and civil rights groups that any voter verification
system must meet HAVA’s requirements that voters with disabilities
can access that system with privacy and independence. Unfortunately,
we are still awaiting the development of an accessible voting
machine that can meet the Holt bill’s paper ballot requirement and
that has been tested and certified for use in elections.
We are working with other disability advocates to convince members
of the House and Senate that the 2008 paper ballot deadline in the
Holt bill is unrealistic, and will in effect force election
officials to either violate the paper ballot requirements of the
bill or violate the accessibility requirements of HAVA and the
bill. We have also been advocating that new funds must be made
available to enable election officials to purchase equipment once
there is equipment that meets the bill’s requirements, which will
likely take several years to be developed.
The Holt bill requires the federal government to study how best to
make it’s voter-verifiable paper ballot accessible to voters with
a wide range of disabilities, and requires the government to
report on its findings by January of 2010. We do not understand
why the bill’s paper ballot requirements take effect two year’s
before the completion of this important study.
We encourage you to contact your Congressional representatives
during the next two weeks and urge them to move back the paper
ballot deadline in the Holt bill, and take any other steps
necessary to ensure that voters with disabilities will be able to
vote privately and independently in next year’s critical
presidential elections.
For more accessible voting news issues, see:
http://www.aapd.com/dvpmain/votemachines/indexmachines.php