FW: [LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Electronic votiing

[Daniel Rose]

>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.

How?  Well, we could use large raised letters on special ballots; nope,
not easy.  We could get someone to help them in the booth; nope, not
secret.  We could assemble a fleet of complex expensive computers to
accommodate these people; nope, that's not easy either:

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=2102

"Wilcox said in an interview that she surveyed more than 50 members of
her group after hearing anecdotal accounts of Election Day snafus. Only
two members said the machines had functioned smoothly. About a dozen
provided detailed descriptions of the problems they experienced using
the audio technology that was supposed to guide them through the ballot
and help them cast a vote in secret.
[...]
Noel Runyan, a blind voter and computer scientist who is an expert in
designing accessible systems, said touch screens are a good idea in
theory, but they need a thorough redesign to work in practice. He said
the voting companies appeared to have ignored feedback they solicited
from groups of blind voters as they were developing their systems.
Among the criticism provided by voters was poor sound quality, delayed
response time and braille that was positioned so awkwardly it could only
be read upside down. Chen, the college professor, also said the audio
message required blind voters to press a yellow button. ``Yellow means
nothing to me,'' Chen said."


>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.

I agree completely that nobody has a viable alternative, because of the
requirements.  Let us try, however:

Essentially, alone, a blind voter must accept information about
candidates, and indicate a selection.  The best cue about how this may
be done will clearly be found by looking at other scenarios where this
is achieved.  My basis is from tuning an older radio;

Headphones and a large "stepped" knob (ie with gradations in turning).
Turn the knob right to move forward, a candidate is read out by the
machine.  Left, the previous candidate is read out.  A button is next to
the knob, when you press it you get a confirmation prompt asking if this
is who you want, press it again to confirm, or move the knob to choose
someone else.

A ballot is printed by the machine, the voter carries it and puts it in
a box with the others.

Can this get any simpler? how? no touch screens, no USB, no
communications, there doesn't need to be a computer in the normal sense
at all.

However, there is still no way for the voter to know that the ballot has
on it a vote as they intended, since they can't see what's printed!

I'd also like to see a comparison in numbers between blind voters who
lose the right to absolute secrecy, but who can still vote if they can
find a helper more reliable than the machine, and the number of people
who are wrongly or merely unjustly convicted, thereby losing the right
to vote altogether.  If the issue is _really_ about disenfrachisement
then there may be greater gains to be found here.

I think that blind people should be able to vote, but I question the
underlying assumption that it is an absolute good to be obtained at any
cost.