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System test-drive crucial
By RICHARD VALENTY Colorado
Daily Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 14, 2006 9:39 PM MST
Boulder County intends to
lease voting equipment for the disabled in 2006, and citizen opinion varies
greatly on whether it's on the right track.
A county Request For Proposal Evaluation Team
(RFPET) will witness a demonstration of the “eSlate” Direct
Record Electronic (DRE) voting system by vendor Hart InterCivic in a public
meeting Wednesday (today) at 9 a.m.
The eSlate can be used unassisted by voters with disabilities or by those who
don't use English as a primary language. The federal Help America Vote Act
(HAVA) of 2002 requires at least one way for the disabled to vote unassisted
in each polling place, although counties could choose not to provide
equipment and face consequences of noncompliance.
Josh Liss, county elections coordinator, said the Boulder County Attorney's
office has created a memo for the Board of Boulder County Commissioners
identifying some of the possible consequences of non-compliance, including
loss of federal HAVA funding and/or legal action initiated by advocates for
the disabled.
The RFPET will hold one more meeting after Wednesday's product evaluation
before possibly making a recommendation to the Commissioners on whether or
not to lease the eSlate. Hart was the only company to offer a formal lease
response to the county.
Liss said he and the RFPET have asked Hart to demonstrate all eSlate
accessibility attachments Wednesday - for example, different attachments for
a blind person as opposed to a person with mobility issues.
He also said the RFPET would be able to cast sample ballots on the eSlate.
Members of the public will be allowed to attend the demo, but Liss didn't
guarantee or rule out that the public would be able to do the same.
Al Kolwicz, voting activist and executive director of Citizens for Accurate
Mail Ballot Election Results (CAMBER), is concerned that Wednesday's event
would be too much of a vendor demo that doesn't take into account who will
really be using the system.
He said the Hart representative(s) present Wednesday will be well-trained in
the use of the eSlate, but in an actual election, the accuracy and efficiency
could depend on the individual voter and training of precinct election judges
- people who might be more familiar with systems of the past.
“When you're dealing with brand new equipment and blind people, and
they're coming into your polling place, you have to be sure that a typical
60-, 70- or 80-year-old election judge can help a blind voter go from A to Z
appropriately,” said Kolwicz.
But Faith Gross, an RFPET member and advocate for the disabled, said it's
essential that the county provide at least some form of HAVA-compliant
machine.
“This is a voting rights and civil rights issue for the disabled
community,” said Gross. “It's this community's Voting Rights Act,
and many have never been able to vote unassisted.”
Gross is the “VOTE! Program” coordinator for the Denver-based Legal Center for People with Disabilities
and Older People, a nonprofit and largely federally funded entity.
Gross said her program is geared towards ensuring that the disability
requirements in HAVA are implemented and providing election officials with
assistance in meeting the requirements. She said Colorado voters with visual, cognitive,
mobility, manual dexterity and/or other disabilities might visit the polls in
the next election.
She said she is familiar with the eSlate and other systems usable by the
disabled, and said she hasn't seen any “red flags” with the Hart
system when it comes to meeting the needs of most disabled people.
The county will use roughly 230 precinct polling places in 2006, but Liss
said the county has not compiled statistics on how many disabled voters would
need to use a HAVA-compliant device. He also said able-bodied voters would be
able to choose whether to use the county's current Hart paper ballot system
or the HAVA-compliant machine.
“I don't think we can restrict usage to one particular class of
voters,” said Liss.
Kolwicz, like many voting activists, has expressed concern that DREs record
voter choices on digital media and not on paper ballots. He said he is
concerned about how the county might take DRE and paper ballot information
and combine the two into precinct or batch results for post-election reports.
“I'm sure Hart has a way to do it, but will it be verifiable?”
asked Kolwicz. “You're combining invisible votes from inside a DRE and
paper ballots, and it's not clear to me that pollwatchers will be able to
verify anything during that process.”
Liss said he doesn't share the activists' concern that something will go
wrong if the county uses electronic machines, but said the county has decided
to lease this year in case better systems come out in the future.
“A lot of counties are going into this election with brand new
equipment, and we want to learn from experience to make an informed decision
next year,” said Liss.
Contact Richard Valenty about this story at (303) 443-6272 ext. 126 or valenty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
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