Voting and Accessibility
Sadly, this surprises me not at all:
A Government Accountability Office report to be released Wednesday found that in last November's historic election, nearly one-third of polling places failed to accommodate voters in wheelchairs. Twenty-three percent had machines for the disabled that offered less privacy than offered to others - some even positioned in a way that other people could see how they were voting.
The accessible voting machine at my polling place was out in the middle of things. I repeatedly had to ask poll-workers to be quiet because I couldn't hear my choices; and had to listen to things more than once. The recording quality of ballot information was inconsistent, and the machines King County uses provide no easy way of quickly reviewing information. You have to listen to everything in sequence, and the only way of speeding things up creates the speeded-up-tape-recorder "chipmunks" effect. Now, listening to chipmunks reading things is something I'm used to and can understand, but not when there's background noise on the recording, and perky poll-workers are blithely chatting nearby. I no I was visible to them, because I shot them a couple dirty looks to get their attention, besides also having to say, "I'm trying to vote, here"; and since I didn't notice any form of shielding around me, I suspect it would have been possible for someone to read over my shoulder.
And that was after they had to try a couple times to get the machine to work.
A colleague of mine in upstate New York said her polling place had all kinds of issues as well.
A Government Accountability Office report to be released Wednesday found that in last November's historic election, nearly one-third of polling places failed to accommodate voters in wheelchairs. Twenty-three percent had machines for the disabled that offered less privacy than offered to others - some even positioned in a way that other people could see how they were voting.
The accessible voting machine at my polling place was out in the middle of things. I repeatedly had to ask poll-workers to be quiet because I couldn't hear my choices; and had to listen to things more than once. The recording quality of ballot information was inconsistent, and the machines King County uses provide no easy way of quickly reviewing information. You have to listen to everything in sequence, and the only way of speeding things up creates the speeded-up-tape-recorder "chipmunks" effect. Now, listening to chipmunks reading things is something I'm used to and can understand, but not when there's background noise on the recording, and perky poll-workers are blithely chatting nearby. I no I was visible to them, because I shot them a couple dirty looks to get their attention, besides also having to say, "I'm trying to vote, here"; and since I didn't notice any form of shielding around me, I suspect it would have been possible for someone to read over my shoulder.
And that was after they had to try a couple times to get the machine to work.
A colleague of mine in upstate New York said her polling place had all kinds of issues as well.