State: Activist: Election law ignores special needs

Last month's massive overhaul of Florida's election laws has been touted as a national model for reform, yet thousands of disabled voters will be untouched by the legislation, an advocate for the disabled told the state's top election officials Thursday.

The new law forces 41 counties to buy updated election equipment in time for the 2002 fall election but does not require them to choose new technology that would, for example, allow blind people to have a ballot read to them electronically or allow those who are paralyzed to vote using a blowing device.

"There are people out there ready to argue that if you don't buy accessible equipment, you're violating ADA (the Americans with Disabilities Act)," said Doug Towne of St. Petersburg, president of the Florida Coalition on Disability Rights. He proposed the state set up a task force to address the problem.

Speaking to the state's 67 county election supervisors at Saddlebrook Resort, Towne warned that other advocacy groups were poised to file lawsuits, which could delay implementation of the law. Nearly 300,000 people in Florida have severe sight impairment.

As the supervisors gathered to discuss how the law will work, Towne's remarks on the final day of their four-day conference foreshadowed the complex issues that remain before Florida can get past the 2000 election.

Among the subjects the supervisors tackled were whether to let overseas military personnel transmit their ballots by e-mail and how to uniformly deal with the incorrect ways voters fill out their ballots -- punching out ovals that were meant to be filled in with pencil, filling in five choices when one was called for, and scrawling messages that violate every instruction but nevertheless express a choice.

Underscoring the amount of unfinished business, Clay Roberts, director of the state Division of Elections, said his department hopes to complete by the fall a set of rules that will determine how the law works.

That's not so he can set a speed record. Roberts said he wants to leave plenty of time before the 2002 election to deal with the lawsuits that inevitably will be filed challenging the rules.

One legal issue that may arise is whether the new law treats every voter in Florida equally, a question that arose in the election aftermath. Roberts said there are good arguments that the new law meets the "equal protection" standard and equally good arguments that it doesn't.

For example, it could be argued that allowing counties to buy different voting systems is, by definition, treating voters differently.

In the Tampa Bay area, Pinellas officials are considering an electronic "touch screen" voting system that operates much an ATM. But neighboring Hillsborough is leaning toward an optical-scan system in which voters fill in an oval or an arrow on a paper ballot.

The act of voting would be dramatically different in those two counties, but both systems would be similar in one important way. Both would allow voters to change errors on their ballots before leaving the polling place.

To Towne, however, there is no comparison.

The advocate for the disabled favors electronic voting machines with features such as audio that recites the ballot in a headset for blind and illiterate voters. But most counties, citing cost concerns, have opted to buy optical scan systems that require many disabled people to bring along a friend or relative to vote for them, as they have always done.

"As a blind person, optical scanners are not exactly friendly to me," Towne said. "Voting in secret may not seem to be a big issue to you as an individual -- not until you don't have that right."

Nearly 300,000 people in Florida are either legally blind or have visual impairments so severe they cannot read a newspaper, even with glasses or contacts, according to a joint survey by the Division of Blind Services and the Florida Association of Agencies Serving the Blind. About half of those residents live in the 10 or so counties that are seriously considering touch screens. But the other half will be left to contend with optical scan systems.

To drive home his point about voting in private, Towne recalled that before the advent of scanning technology that turns the printed word into an electronic voice, he was forced to have others read him his mail, including love letters and nasty notes from bill collectors.

"You know what comes in the mail; you know what you would share with the world and what you wouldn't," he told the supervisors. "Consider if you didn't have that right."

Towne and many supervisors were dismayed to learn Thursday that even some touch screen companies are applying to have their systems certified by the Division of Elections without the disabled friendly features they have touted in public meetings across the state.

That's because the companies are so eager to enter the Florida market they don't want to bog down the certification process, said Paul Craft, the elections official in charge of certification.

But Craft said the strategy is having the opposite effect, slowing the process. He urged supervisors to pressure the companies to push their disabled-friendly features as a priority now.

Some supervisors have already pitched touch screens to their county commissions as a way to reach out to the disabled community. Others have been threatened with lawsuits if they don't buy such systems.

Towne blamed Gov. Jeb Bush's elections task force for not ensuring that measures to help the disabled were included in the new law.

A member of that task force, St. Lucie County supervisor Gertrude Walker, said the task force discussed the disabled, but didn't have enough time to properly deal with the issue. "I'm just appalled" at the lack of requirements, she said. "I'm just almost speechless."

House majority leader Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, acknowledged Thursday there were problems with the law but said they could be fixed in the next legislative session.

Back to State news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk