I’ve researched the issues. I’ve studied the candidates. I’m ready to vote. Now I’m just hoping the talking voting machine works when Whitney leads me to my voting booth.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires voting systems to provide independent and private voting for all voters — including those of us with disabilities. I use a touch screen machine with audio output to vote — with sound added to the ballot, I put on headphones, listen to the choices, and punch a button on a special contraption connected to the keyboard. That is, as long as someone at the polling place knows how to get the machine and the contraption to work. It isn’t exactly intuitive.
My experience in the last couple of elections has gone something like this: I sign in, and poll workers scramble. All of them seem to want to do right by me, but few of them know what “right” is. Where are the headphones? How do you start the talking machine? Why isn’t the audio working?
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) sets up a toll-free hotline (877-632-1940) on election days to help voters who are blind if we experience problems at polling places. Voting specialists are on the line to help blind voters and/or poll workers resolve the issue, but back during the 2008 election my issue with the voting machine couldn’t be resolved. My husband Mike can see, so he signed an affidavit to be able to help me with a written ballot. Voting specialists on the National Federation of the Blind hotline recorded details and referred my issue “to the proper authorities for follow-up action.”
I’m really hoping things go smoothly at the polling place today — not only for me, but for all of us who are blind and want to vote independently. It’d be swell if none of us have to make use of that hotline number this year, but I’m glad the NFB is ready to help if necessary. Now, off to the polling place. “Whitney, forward!”
Good for you. It is so much easier to use the absentee system, here anyway, and voting itself is what is most important. However, there is something about the ease and anonymity of absentee voting that misses the point that the process counts, too–the process of voting privately, at one’s polling place, on election day. Kudos to you for toughing it out!
Hi, Beth,
We’ll be leaving soon to vote at an ancient, two-room schoolhouse in a town of about 200 people. We use paper ballots and special pencils . . . I think. Or maybe we use those little pointy things to poke holes in the ballots. Anyhow, I’ll be able to see to figure it out.
I hope all goes well for you today. What a shame every polling place couldn’t have someone like my husband working as an election judge. When we lived in Rockford, he volunteered for that job, and he would have welcomed the challenge of helping you or anyone who found things difficult. He’d be able to figure out any technical problem. He certainly gets tons of practice helping me with all these electronic devices that have become part of our world.
Have a great day!
Its amazing the number of things we sighted take for granted – such as being able to see a ballot. Your posts help me to “see” things from a different point of view. Really makes me think and appreciate what I have.
Beth,
Stephanie from NJ here – I was just listening to NY Public Radio and they are taking calls from voters about the process. A blind woman just called in and said that she had difficulty at her polling place. They basically wanted her to get help from a sighted person and she refused and they called the cops on her!!!! She’s now patiently waiting to get someone from the election commission to step in. She said she’ll wait all day if it comes to that. I commend the both of you!!!!!!
Beth, it is amazing how easily we forget about privacy – since my husband suffers from dimentia, I had to help him with the complications of the machines and understand the referendums – his voting choices took long minutes of thinking, but they were his own still! Isn’t it wonderful that we can…..?
You will have to keep us “posted” on the outcome of your voting experience.
I wonder… Did “the proper authorities” actually “follow-up” the last time when you had trouble voting? Is there any way to know? Wow, I’d never even thought about the lack of privacy involved in voting if you can’t see.
How did it go?
Rudy J. Lubov rjlubov@aol.com rlubov@pdaonline.org 312-282-0459
Sent from my iPhone
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