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Re: your thoughts on voting and its accessibility

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From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Sep 9, 2013 10:14AM

On Mon, 9 Sep 2013, Whitney Quesenbery wrote:
> One thing that any accessibility advocate can do is ask to use the
> accessible system. When they sit unused, they don't get set up well, so
> fewer people use them, so ... a vicious cycle. More people using them helps
> break that cycle.

Indeed. I only need the AutoMark machine about half the times
that I vote, but it wasn't until I started asking for it every
time that my precinct finally learned how to set the darn thing
up so that it was always turned on when I got there. Now I just
ask for it every time as a matter of course.

Web voting has huge security implications, but then with so many
states not requiring a paper trail for in-booth electronic
voting, traditional voting also has huge security implications.
There are plenty of videos online of people trivially hacking the
modern Diebold machines. Web voting seems like it could be made
at least that secure..

We would just need to make sure that the secure online voting
tools do not prohibit the use of people's accessibility software
that they have installed. (And there would have to be traditional
voting for people who don't have web access, of course.)

Deborah Kaplan
Accessibility Team Co-Lead
Dreamwidth Studios LLC