[EL] ELB News and Commentary 8/2/11

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall]

Very interesting post from Michael Waterstone... two things that have bugged
me for years about the arguments surrounding disability and voting
technology are 1) the claim that all people with disabilities should be able
to cast a secret ballot independently (without additional human
intervention) and 2) that somehow accommodating people with disabilities
using a different type of voting technology from nominal voting operations
is unacceptable as that singles them out.

When we look at the universe of possible voter disabilities, it seems
reasonable to design voting technology that can accommodate "most" voters
with disabilities, but not all (multiple disabilities are just too difficult
to accommodate without assistance, often). There also seems to be a
disconnect--reminiscent of the problems with serious security
vulnerabilities showing up in voting systems in the field after various
rounds of testing and certification--in that certain voting technologies
designed to be accessible are, post-procurement, deemed inaccessible to a
certain slice of the disability community and therefore inaccessible,
period. I'm hopeful that the VVSG standards for accessibility will evolve to
better guarantee federallybcertified voting systems are accessible, but
without regular federal funding, I'm not sure the market can support these
costs. (While HAVA's 301 requirement that every polling place have an
accessible voting system is laudable in spirit, my experience is that
they're not used much or at all and when a voter with disabilities asks to
use it, it's often not set up and configured correctly... with horrific
usability properties for things like audio ballot navigation).

So, how far does independent secret balloting for voters with disabilities
go?

And accessibility is fundamentally a subset of the issues we deal with in
the usability/human factors area... requiring the voting technology used by
all voters to be the same may very well result in an inferior voter
experience (poor usability) for all voters, on balance.

While effective disability voting is undeniably important, I worry that it
has started to shape voting over the past decade so much that it isn't
improving anything for anyone, when all is said and done, and some are even
resentful. (Pollworkers we talk to in our research (qualitative,
non-representative, not generalizable!) say things like, "That machine is a
$10k waste of money... no one has used it ever, in the five years I've been
a poll worker.")

Anyway, I'll soon be starting a postdoc at NYU to work on health IT policy
(security and privacy), so I'm about to relegate most of my voting work to
consulting for the near future... I've found myself having a number of
"reflections" like this and I wanted to also thank everyone out there in
election-law land (Rick and the two Dans, especially) that helped,
encouraged or stimulated my thinking while getting my PhD at Berkeley.
Thanks, Joe

On Tuesday, August 2, 2011, Daniel Tokaji <tokaji.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
> Waterstone on AAPD v. Harris <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=21246>
>
> Posted on August 2, 2011 <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=21246> by Dan
Tokaji <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>
>
> The following is a guest post from Michael Waterstone <
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/waterstone.html>:
>
> Thanks to Dan and Rick for inviting me to post on the recent opinion in
AAPD v. Harris <http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200715004.reh.pdf>.
As Dan notes <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=21187>, the wheels of justice
have moved slowly on this case.  The original district court opinion (from
2004) is in an earlier edition of my disability law casebook <
http://west.thomson.com/blanck-hill-siegal-waterstones-disability-civil-rights-law-policy-cases/147894/40752995/productdetail>.
It held that voting machines requiring voters with visual impairments to
vote with third-party assistance violated Title II of the ADA.  The Eleventh
Circuit previously reversed the district court, holding that plaintiffs did
not have a private right of action to enforce the ADA.  This decision holds
that voting machines are not a facility and therefore are not covered by one
of the regulations implementing Title II of the ADA. … Continue reading → <
http://electionlawblog.org/?p=21246>


-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
ACCURATE Postdoctoral Research Associate
UC Berkeley School of Information
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
http://josephhall.org/
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