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| | Name : | Jim Dickson | Organization : | American Assoc. of People With Disabilities (AAPD) | Post Date : | 9/30/2005 |
| Section : | 2.2.7 | Page no. : | | Line no.: | | Comment : | The Rights Task Force suggests the following recommendations to be
included in the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) Access
Standards, specifically Section 2.2.7, and the "Human Factors" section
which deals with accessibility, accuracy, and secrecy in the voting
process:
1. An element that needs to be included as the first step in "access
to the voting process" is accessible voter registration.
There are 20.9 million voting aged citizens with disabilities who are not
registered to vote, approximately 56% of the total disability population.
This figure comes from the examination of 740,000 public voting records in
ten states, prior to the November 2004 election. Despite the passage of
the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in 1993, there remains a large
voter registration gap between people with disabilities and the general
population * a barrier here prohibits further participation in the
electoral process.
As you may be aware, many people with disabilities who are eligible to
vote do not drive and consequently do not have a need to visit the state
division of motor vehicles (DMV) as highlighted by the NVRA. Intending to
eliminate the voter registration gap, the NVRA also requires that states
shall designate disability and social service agencies to offer voter
registration, application collection, and to send the voter registrations
to the state registrar's office. Unfortunately, disability and social
service agency participation in NVRA mandates has been spotty at best.
Under Motor Voter, states are given the leeway to identify disability and
social service agencies which shall provide voter registration,
particularly if they receive federal funding. Any states which have not
identified agency participation so must do so immediately, and the Rights
Task Force recommends that all states shall undertake regular compliance
reviews to ensure that people with disabilities have full access to the
registration process.
As Diane Golden, Ph.D., of the Missouri Assistive Technology Council
states, in any access standards development process, a central goal is to
ensure that the level of accessibility required is reasonably achievable
while at the same time providing an adequate level of accessibility for
individuals with a wide variety of disabilities. It is acknowledged that
full accessibility cannot be delivered to all individuals with all types
and combinations of disabilities. At the same time, it is also commonly
understood that accessibility standards should not provide an extensive
level of accessibility to one disability group while disregarding the
access needs of others. And most importantly, access standards should
always maintain or move the level of accessibility forward. A new set of
access standards should never reduce the level of accessibility that was
delivered by a previous set of standards. | |
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