How about a whole new way to reach out to disabled voters? We can all do what New Hampshire did. They asked the disability advocacy groups (those not taking money from the computerized voting industry) what they need. Guess what they said are their top two items?
1. Sensitivity training
2. Physical accessibility
Think how many sensitivity training videos you can create for pollworkers, how many polling place parking lots can be paved, how many ramps you can install, how many wheelchair-sized polling booths you can construct, for the cost of one computerized voting machine any given jurisdiction may buy for the one or two sight impaired voters who may or may not choose to come to the polls.
Learn more about the NH solution here.
Is the name of the game REALLY to make voting more accessible to as many people as possible? If so, see #1 & 2 above.
Is the name of the game to enrich the technoelection private interests? To disenfranchise voters with voting systems using secret vote counting? If so, let's be honest about it.
If we let our lasso of truth reveal what is really going on with election reform, then maybe we can inject some common sense. Like what New Hampshire did to improve accessibility for as many voters as possible. I don't bring you these New Hampshire parables in order to show how wonderful we are in the Granite State. I do it to let loose the lasso of truth.
To help us understand that it is possible and desirable to remember that our elections exist for the sole purpose of allowing the populace to express its collective political will. They do not exist to be a playground for technocrats gone wild.
We need to collectively understand this fully and completely. We need to stop accepting the rationalizations, and we need to stop being apologists for the technoelection accessibility lie.
We can improve voting accessibility for the disabled and the minority language populations. We can do this sensibly, to standards of real democratic elections, by creating and sustaining observable, publicly owned voting systems.
We can create and pass real election reform that makes sense, works, is cost effective, and supports democracy and the American Republic.
For a look at what this new step in accessible and verifiable voting means in practical terms, please see the section on Safe Harbor and the new added step in my piece "Crippling Cost of HR 811 Leaves States Exposed and Defenseless".
