The VotePAD vendor had offered to arrange the participation of a wide range of disability advocacy organizations in the VotePAD testing trials (see http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_ellen_th_060710_vote_pad_invites_peo.htm), but this offer was quashed by the Voting Systems Testing and Assessment Board appointed by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.
The board limited test participation to a small number of undisclosed disability testers that the board selected, and barred the public from observing the trials, held July 19 and 20 at the Secretary of State offices. VotePAD proponents say the board conducted testing without adequate preparation or expert competence in usability testing criteria and methods for persons with disabilities. [See http://www.vote-pad.us/media/cacerttestresponse.asp].
Election activists also question apparent double-standards in state testing procedures that subject electronic system vendors to less stringent usability testing than that applied in the VotePAD trials.
"Why aren't other systems being tested this way?" asks A.J. Devies, Disabilities Consultant to the Florida Fair Elections Coalition. "Is the Secretary of State discriminating against this non-electronic system by holding it to a different standard?"
Election integrity activists have testified in protest at numerous California voting system certification hearings over the past two years objecting to the state certification of electronic machines that fail to meet the accessibility standard for non-visible (audio) means of voter verification required by California law SB 1438 and incorporated in the state Elections Code [see http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/03-04/bill/sen/sb_1401-1450/sb_1438_bill_20040927_chaptered.html].
"Direct record electronic"(DRE) voting machines have been heavily promoted as the solution to voting access for the disabled since the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which made available the financial inducement of $3.8 billion in one-time federal grants for voting equipment upgrades. Election integrity activists have denounced electronic voting machines as "Trojan horses" that open up the electoral process to covert hacking manipulations that can falsify election results without detection. (See http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbvreport.pdf,http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbvtsxstudy.pdf,http://www.openvotingfoundation.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleid=1).
Those revelations have in turn been the basis for a growing number of legal actions challenging electronic voting and the trade-secret proprietary claims of e-voting vendors as antithtetical to guarantees of voting rights and open government afforded citizens by their state constitutions (see http://www.atla.org/homepage/trial.aspx).
An additional consideration election activists point out is the high purchase cost and continuing maintenance expense of DRE voting machines, which they say could be avoided by the adoption of sensible, low-cost, appropriate voting technology such as the Vote PAD and a similar voting assistive device called the Equalivote (http://www.equalivote.com/pg2b.html).
Stu Schy of Santa Rosa, a systems usability consultant with over 20 years' experience working with the disability community, says "Sonoma County paid $4.7 million for the equipment used in the June 6 primary, and only $1.4 million was covered by HAVA. The number of votes cast on the machines was 165. That's over $28,000 per vote! We need and want a low-cost alternative."
Casey Hanson of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition sums it up: "The nation looks to California for its leadership role. We're all watching and we hope that the public will show up to show their support for having Vote-PAD as an alternative to computerized voting systems."
Dan Ashby E-mail: ca.voteraction@sbcglobal.net The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery. . . Thomas Paine
