I know that I’m giving away my age here, but this is the eighth time that I have voted in a presidential election. Up to now, I have never been able to vote without sighted assistance. Although I am aware that accessible voting machines have been made widely available; you need to understand that I reside in a very small precinct on an island off the coast of Florida. This is the first time that my precinct had an accessible voting machine. I have always gone to the pole with someone whom I trusted to help me fill out my ballot correctly. I never liked the fact that I was unable to vote without someone’s assistance, and of course, without the privacy that comes with voting independently. This election, I went on my own without knowing that there would be an accessible machine at my precinct this time. I took an Uber to my local library which is where I always go to vote. I walked in alone, and I fully expected to have to ask for sighted assistance from the pole workers. In fact, this is what the election officials told me would happen. To my surprise, I was told that an accessible voting machine had been acquired. I took my ballot, went over to the machine, and sat down. I put on a pair of headsets, and inserted my ballot. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Alex voice giving me instructions on how to use the machine. I was expecting Fred. The machine has five main buttons, arranged in a diamond shape. Each one is labeled in braille. The top and bottom buttons navigate up and down through your selections. You then press the middle button to make the selection that you want. The machine confirms your selection by reading it back to you. Next, you press the right arrow the go to the next item, and arrow up and down again until you reach the selection you want. You then press the middle button again. The machine read all the choices very well, including all the state constitutional amendments and county referenda. It was so incredibly in powering to read my ballot and make my selections without assistance and without anyone else knowing the choices that I was making. I know that many of you have already experienced accessible voting, and I hope you can remember how it made you feel because that is how I feel today.
If you would like to share your story, you can do so in the comments below. You can also fill out a survey from the National Federation of the Blind that asks you to rate your voting experience. The survey can be found here.
Well we do not have those types of machines here not even online voting because of security concerns.
We do however have dictation voting, you register via a special number with your date of birth, address and name.
You need to be on the role first.
You get there by first signing up for the realme government secure database and identity service.
After that you need to sign up and varify your address via postal mail and code with the postal services, this needs sight.
Every 5 years you need to varify for your photo at a station that can handle that and you do need sighted assistance for this, those stations also double as pasport renewel stations and you can add your passport service to the database.
You need to enrole to get on the role and the digital role to.
In addition if you are disabled you need to varify yourself on the income services,with a text or emailed varification code and then also varify with your voice.
You also need a community service card and an ird tax number as well as a client member number.
You also need to get to be a member of a disabled organisation and pay for a membership card.
You also need a bank account of some sort for various things.
most of that if for starting out.
Once set, you just need to be registered in the system, and you can get your own security questions and answers and an id then you ring that number up later on in the next day or 2 and quote your id, then your security question answers.
After that you are read by the opperater your choices and make them.
Once done, someone else checks everything off then the origional person posts the vote for you.
To get on the system for a beginner took me about 2 months to do.
You spend a lot of time waiting for codes for varification either via mail or whatever.
It can take up to a couple days to get your identity checked by police.
You get automatically subscribed to secured identity services once you are registered though.
Once you are able to vote and are fully registered, as long as you keep membership numbers updated, and all details its a quick 2 second job.
For me it means I don’t need to leave my house.