http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/opinion/11FRI1.html
June
11, 2004
MAKING
VOTES COUNT
The Disability Lobby and
Voting
Two
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.
Copyright
2004 The New York Times Company
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