The good news is that voting, as an American tradition, is alive and well. The bad news is that the disenfranchisement of people with disabilities — also a tradition in this country — is, too. I experienced it firsthand last Tuesday in Augusta, Maine, when I attempted to exercise my constitutional right to vote. I am a disability rights attorney who happens to be blind. Neither blindness nor accessible voting systems are new to me: I have been blind since childhood, and I was a driving force in the implementation of the accessible voting system component of the Help America Vote Act in Maine and New Hampshire. On Tuesday, when I went to vote, the problems were immediate: It took two people from the city clerk’s office a half hour to get the accessible voting machine working. Once it was ostensibly functioning, it would not accept my selections on the first try — or the second, third or fourth. In fact, not until my fifth attempt. Did nondisabled voters need to wrestle their paper ballots into compliance like this? Roughly 35 minutes after I had begun voting, my ballot was complete — or so I thought.
In talking with my wife about the experience, I discovered that I hadn’t voted on a probate judge race because it hadn’t been programmed into the voting machine. We returned to the poll, and I voted on that race by having my wife read that ballot to me. Upon leaving the polls the second time, a pollworker handing out “I voted” stickers at the exit said, “Thank you for voting twice.” In view of this election’s publicity surrounding voter fraud, this statement, even if meant as a joke, was offensive.
Nobody mentioned to me that there remained several more races and ballot questions that had not been included on the accessible voting machine. I didn’t find out until it was too late to rectify that I had been denied my chance to weigh in on several important questions facing our community and our state.
Full Article: I’m Blind And I Voted. Here’s What Went Wrong | Cognoscenti.