Voting Machines Allow Unassisted Access At Polls By Jerry Sena Love ’em or hate ’em. That about sums up the response from disabled voters regarding the new Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting machines making their debut in Watauga County this election season. Hubert and Caroline Ward love everything about them. The brother and sister — both legally blind — are officers in the local chapter of the North Carolina Council for the Blind. They could not wait to finally cast their votes for real on the machines they first tested at a conference in Raleigh a couple of years ago. They returned home following that conference, hosted by the National Association for the Blind, energized by what they had found there, and determined to pass their newfound knowledge on to local elections officials. The conference had been attended by representatives for a number of DRE manufacturers, including Austin, Texas-based Hart InterCivic, maker of the e-Slate, which county elections director Jane Hodges has chosen for Watauga County voters this year, largely, she says, on the enthusiastic recommendation of the Wards. “All the different companies were showing their machines,” recalled Caroline. “We were very excited. We went right over and told Jane about them as soon as we got back.” Advantages The Wards’ enthusiasm is more than understandable considering what they found in Raleigh that day. DREs offered a chance for sightless voters to vote unassisted for the first time. For those who have never been afforded the opportunity to experience it firsthand, assisted voting gives new meaning to the term “political party.” For many disabled voters who require assistance with casting their vote, the party can quickly become a crowd, requiring one witness from each major party to assure the votes are faithfully cast as requested by the voter. There often is even another official present to perform the actual act of voting. DREs make it possible to pare down the number of party guests to one, if desired, or at the very least limit attendance to invited guests alone. “It makes us more independent,” Caroline reported after casting her first real electronic vote Wednesday afternoon. “We don’t have to depend on others to mark our ballot.” Paper Trail? Hubert Ward said he is equally happy with his experience at the polls Wednesday afternoon. He is preoccupied, though, with the criticism that seems to shadow the machines everywhere they go. Not because he shares the opinions of the growing legion of critics. He seems worried the technology might be shelved before it has a chance to prove itself worthy of the electorate’s trust. “That’s always the issue,” Hubert Ward said, shaking his head, “no paper trail. People keep saying they aren’t very dependable. This has been coming up all over the different states where these machines are being tested. “It’s not a concern of mine at all. I know Jane will only use the best one. What I’m really afraid of is that it won’t get done at all. The real danger would be in blind and other disabled people in general just giving up on voting.” Denial of a right many able-bodied voters take for granted —the secret ballot — difficulty maneuvering a wheel chair into the voting booth, the struggle to make out the relatively small print on most ballots, learning disabilities that make reading and comprehending the contents on the ballot harder still, all act as deterrents to voting that many disabled citizens must overcome every election year. “People get very discouraged,” Hubert Ward pointed out. “I’m not sure what the numbers are but a lot of disabled voters have just given up.” The DREs offer earphones and spoken instructions that not only lead the voter step-by-step through the ballot and describe the location of controls on the machine’s panel, but confirm their choices and warn when a vote has been entered improperly. Those with diminished sight can enlarge the text to the desired size. Quadriplegics can use a special controller that enables them to navigate the controls with breath and head movement alone. Congress has mandated complete unassisted access to the polls for all voters by January 2006, and the Wards believe DREs offer the best solution ever to an ages-old problem. DREading The Machines Dewey Pruitt has taken a position at the other end of the spectrum from Hubert and Caroline Ward. Pruitt had not yet used the machines when he talked to The Mountain Times Oct. 15. “I hate to say anything about them right now because I haven’t seen them and had a chance to try them yet,” Pruitt said. “But I’m real worried .” Pruitt’s skepticism is shared by many voters who have trouble imagining how pressing a few buttons and twirling a dial as a means of herding electrons into a database, with no record of whether they ever arrived safely at their intended destination, could ever provide enough assurance that their vote really counted. “These machines can be a real problem,” he said. “I don’t know how it’s going to go. Some people could have problems understanding how they work. So what are they going to do, have someone standing right there while they vote?” Asked how they could change the way disabled people vote, Pruitt focused mostly on the worst-case possibilities. “They could change things a whole lot. Some of the vets have short term memory problems. Lots of vets have been hit in the head and they might look at something and for about five or six seconds, hold onto it; then it’s gone.” “I’m a real skeptic about these machines. I just saw it in the paper last night that some machine in Florida went crazy.” Pruitt is referring to an August primary in a Florida county where some 12,000 DRE-cast votes for state’s attorney went unrecorded. Such undervotes, as they are known are not unheard of no matter the method of voting employed. Sometimes people just choose not to vote for a particular office or issue, for reasons known only to the voters themselves. The absence of a paper trail, which is the most commonly cited weakness of the DRE voting systems, made it impossible to go back and confirm the votes had not been cast and then somehow lost by the machines. “I’d hate to see something like that happen here in our beautiful city. I love it here in Watauga County. I moved here years ago and I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I’d hate to see what happened last time down in Florida happen here in Boone.”