[LINK] Blind voter demands secret vote

[Tom Worthington]

At 01:55 PM 24/08/2007, Craig Sanders wrote:
>... in later news, a legless man sues his local council for not 
>providing footpaths that he can walk on.  ...

Australian law requires that a person with a disability get the same 
service as others, where feasible 
<http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/dda_guide/dda_guide.htm>. 
So your "legless man" should have a reasonable expectation that their 
council will provide footpaths he can use, where this would not cost 
too much to do.

The reason this has become an issue with voting is that previously 
there was no easy way to allow a blind person to vote in secret. 
Computer based systems are making that more feasible and so there are 
fewer excuses not to do it. This is much the same reason why 
accessible web sites are encouraged: it is relatively cheap and easy 
to do and so there are few excuses not to do it: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/bat2001f.html>.

The ACT Electoral Commission put in a system for electronic voting in 
local government elections in Canberra in 2001 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/links/20011022.html>. The major polling 
stations were equipped for electronic voting and were used for 
pre-polling, polling on polling day and for the disabled. This made 
maximum use of the equipment and minimized the cost. The system was 
used for 8.3% of the votes 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting#Australia>. I used 
the system to vote in the last two elections and it worked fine.

The system for the federal election is being built by the same 
company as did the ACT system. It will be more limited, only being 
used by the disabled at some polling stations. It will not be 
available for pre-polling or for other voters using those polling 
stations. A separate system from another company is to be used for 
voting by ADF and AFP personnel overseas (there has been worryingly 
little public reporting about the progress of that system).

A way to reduce the cost of the electronic voting system would be to 
open pre-polling to anyone, not just those who would not able to vote 
on polling day. That way people could vote over several weeks and 
most of the votes could be collected using a few electronic polling 
stations. This would also weaken the ability of groups with large 
advertising budgets to try influence the election outcome using last 
minute saturation advertising. I think that would be a good thing, 
but it is unlikely that any political party in power would accept the 
idea, as they are generally one of the groups benefiting from the advertising.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd           ABN: 17 088 714 309
http://www.tomw.net.au              PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617