Election Reform Bill Promises Upgrades for Disabled Services
By Marty Toohey
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31, 2002–When Janet Wallans goes to the voting booth next Tuesday, she’ll bring a braille-covered piece of paper to help her remember the ballot layout.
She used to memorize the ballot, but it’s difficult to remember everything, she said. So now she calls the county clerk’s office on Election Day and has someone read the ballot to her over the phone. She transcribes what she hears into braille.
Wallans, who is from Hartford, is legally blind. She can operate the voting machines, which use levers, “but it’s tricky sometimes” and maybe even a little inaccurate because she can’t see her choices, she said.
But Wallans is fiercely protective of her right to privacy in the voting booth and won’t allow anyone to assist her with the equipment.
“A person’s vote is private,” she said.
Statistically speaking, Wallans is an exception: A person with a disability who votes. Nationwide, there are an estimated 30 million eligible voters with disabilities of various kinds, but a 1999 Harris Poll showed that fewer than 30 percent of them cast their ballots. By contrast, 51.3 percent of eligble voters cast their ballots in the 2000 general election. Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewisz said that 200,000 to 300,000 of the state’s 400,000 eligible voters with disabilities don’t participate. For all eligible voters in the state, 58.4 percent voted in the 2000 general election.
But thanks to national legislation authored by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and efforts within the state to reform the election process, this may be the last time that Wallans will have to call ahead or use antiquated machines.
The $3.86 billion election reform bill, which President Bush signed into law on Tuesday, requires every precinct in the country by 2006 to have at least one machine for people with disabilities. Connecticut is considering implementing ATM-style touch screens, which Bysiewisz’s office hopes to test in the 2003 elections. The machines would have braille keys and auditory cues telling voters what they’re selecting. They would also be provided by the manufacturers for testing at no taxpayer cost, Bysiewisz said.
“I think the new machines could be very helpful,” said Wallans, who heads a commission in Hartford advising the city on services for people with disabilities “The equipment is definitely there. It’s just a matter of buying it.”
The new reform law authorizes $100 million nationwide in grants to improve polling places for voters with disabilities, and authorizes another $40 million in grants over four years for state entities to assist voters with disabilities. It also requires states to establish centralized voter databases, patterned after Connecticut’s,Bysiewisz said/ Shegave advice on the voter registration portion of the bill, and was at Bush’s signing ceremony. It’s uncertain how much federal money Connecticut could receive, though, because the commission to oversee the reform law hasn’t been formed, and the grant formulas haven’t been calculated.
Congress has not appropriated money for the bill yet, but its advocates, including Dodd, have pledged to fund the bill to the full amount, and point to the overwhelming support it received in both congressional chambers as evidence that the money will go through.
Published in The New Britain Herald, in Connecticut.
