[LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Electronic votiing

[David Goldstein]

The issue is that society in all of its elements - Government, Business and the general community - should work to build an inclusive community. One element of inclusiveness is to care about and accommodate the needs of others.

We do this in many ways - safety rails around the 20th floor balcony, lollipop people on school crossings etc. So yes, things are done differently for people who are blind. But we take into account that things are done differently for children by having the lollipop people at school crossings, by having safety rails on balconies and saying children and the elderly, and anyone else can care for themselves.

I know there are many who subscribe to the survival of the fittest in our society, but as a whole we don’t do this. Even in the 21st century in Australia we are a somewhat caring society.

Dribble about enabling paraplegics to walk is just a paper tiger, or straw man, argument. One can easily enable a person who is blind or vision impaired to vote. One can't enable a paraplegic to walk, at least most of the time.

So the issue is how to enable people who are blind and vision impaired to vote. And nobody on this last has a viable alternative. And I don’t see that anyone really has any idea on whether the setup was secure or not. Rather, it’s fear mongering and guesswork.

David


----- Original Message ----
From: Craig Sanders <cas at taz.net.au>
To: link <link at anu.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, 15 November, 2006 10:17:34 PM
Subject: Re: [LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Electronic votiing


On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 02:17:28AM -0800, David Goldstein wrote:
> Craig,
> 
> I see you're happy to enable discrimination to continue. 

why don't you ask me if i'm still beating my wife?

it's not about discrimination, it's about secure voting.

having assistants to help them vote hardly qualifies as discrimination.
discrimination would be if blind people were banned from voting.

> I'm also very happy to see we have governments that are more
> enlightened than you are, and others, and have seen the importance of


it's also not about enlightenment - it's about using a very PC issue
to sneak in easily corruptible e-voting machines under the guise of
avoiding embarassment for blind voters.

it's depressing to see that there are some people stupid enough to be
sucked in by it.


> enabling people who are blind and vision impaired to be able to vote
> with the same right to privacy as sighted people.

you know, disabilities inherently mean that there are differences in
the way some things are done. why not demand the "right to walk" for
paraplegics? the fact that they can't actually walk is irrelevant, it's
an outrageous discrimination that they're denied the right to walk.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>           (part time cyborg)
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