[NFBNJ] Voting Article With Linda Melendez Lou Ann Blake and Mary Ciccone

[joe ruffalo]

Greetings to all!
I received the following article pertaining to the problems voting 
independently.

Please share with others.

Note: We continue to work on the federal and state levels to provide true 
independent voting.
Again, thanks, Linda, Lou Ann and Mary.

Joe


We care. We share. We grow. We make a difference
Joe Ruffalo, President
National Federation of the Blind of New Jersey
973 743 0075
nfbnj1 at verizon.net
www.nfbnj.org
Raising Expectations To Live The Life You Want!

Your old car keys can be keys to literacy for the blind.
Donate your unwanted vehicle to us by clicking
www.carshelpingtheblind.org
or call 855 659 9314


From: Linda Melendez

Greetings Joe,




Listed below is an article I wanted to share with you from NorthJersey.com 
regarding accessible voting in New Jersey. They interviewed myself, Mary 
Ciccone and Louann Blake from our national headquarters.




Warmly,

Linda Melendez, 1st Vice President

National Federation of the blind of New Jersey

732421 7063

lindamelendez220 at gmsil.com




****




Blind NJ residents are denied private, independent votes in 2020 election, 
advocates say




Gene Myers NorthJersey.com



Linda Melendez would like to vote like everyone else: privately and 
independently.



Being blind, she can fill out a ballot online using a screen reader. But 
then she has to print it and sign it — and she's back to square one.



“If you don’t know where to sign on the ballot you’re out of luck,” said 
Melendez, a Monmouth County resident who lost her sight 20 years ago. “I 
have to ask somebody with sight to help me.”



Blind voters are frustrated. They can't vote using this year's paper 
ballots, and their only other option is to use outdated, confusing audio 
devices that poll workers often don’t know how to attach to voting machines.



Voting is not accessible to blind voters and voters with vision loss, 
advocates said.



Mary Ciccone, director of policy at Disability Rights New Jersey, said the 
audio devices, which connect to the voting machines to read ballots to 
voters wearing headphones, are the most common problem she sees when it 
comes to making voting accessible.



Some of them are so old they still use audiocassettes, and the majority are 
awkward to handle and confusing to use, advocates said.



They are intended to make voting easier, but in reality they are “difficult 
to use” and “not intuitive,” she said. Furthermore, poll workers often don’t 
know how to set them up.



She could 'feel the daggers'



Melendez had her son sit on her lap and help her vote for years. But one day 
she got fed up. Her son was older and in the army, and she decided she had 
the right to vote on her own.



She called ahead and told poll workers she was coming, and would need the 
machine that made it possible for blind people to vote.



“When I walked in they saw the cane and said, ‘Do you need assistance 
voting?’ I said, ‘No, I just need you to set up the equipment for me,” she 
said.



The poll worker made “an audible sigh,” said Melendez. “I said I called 
ahead and they were snotty and snippy with me. I heard the person call the 
county and I heard the other person on the phone say, ‘Can’t you just help 
her vote?’”



The county wanted the poll worker to go into a booth and make selections for 
Melendez, she said.




“I heard it and just said, ‘Tell her no because I wish to exercise my 
privilege as a citizen to vote independently and privately,” said Melendez.



They continued to try to urge her to accept assistance, but Melendez stood 
her ground. She was “adamant “about her right to vote independently and 
privately.” All the while the line behind her grew and Melendez “could feel 
the daggers” of people staring at her while she made a scene.



Department of State staff members did not return requests for comments.



Instances like this have grown through the years, said Lou Ann Blake, 
director of research programs at the National Federation of the Blind in 
Maryland.



“It’s a huge problem that we face,” Blake said. “You get to the polling 
place and the machine is not set up and it’s not set up because they don’t 
know how to set it up and operate it. We’ve been doing a survey for blind 
voters in presidential elections since 2008 and this issue has gotten worse 
over the years. In 2016, our last poll, one third of the voters said poll 
workers didn’t know how to set up or operate the machine. That is a huge 
problem.”



The right to vote



Ciccone has put a lot of time into working with election officials to make 
the voting process accessible. She rarely gets calls about polling sites 
that are not physically accessible. There are usually ramps. Even accessible 
parking is less of a problem these days. Voters who need blue spaces often 
find them. Recognizing the voting rights for blind people is where the state 
is falling short, said Ciccone.



“I argue that it’s a fundamental right,” she said.



Ciccone pointed to the 15th amendment, which granted African Americans the 
right to vote, the 20th amendment, which gave women the right to vote, and 
the 26th amendment, which gave 18-year-olds the right to vote to back this 
up.



“Those amendments give you the absolute right to vote,” said Ciccone. “There 
is nothing in the constitution that gives you the right to have a secret and 
independent ballot, however, New Jersey law against discrimination and the 
Americans with Disabilities Act state that you cannot discriminate against 
people with disabilities in the programs that a state and local government 
provide. So if you are giving the opportunity to people without disabilities 
to vote secretly and independently, you should be giving people with 
disabilities that same right.”



No matter which voting option she chooses, Melendez said the process is 
“cumbersome” for her. She needed help once again this year from her son, who 
helped her sign and mail her ballot.



“I didn’t vote independently or secretly. It wasn’t really accessible for 
me,” she said, adding the state’s “take it or leave it” solution was only 
halfway there.



An evolving solution



In 2014, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) sued the state of 
Maryland, and that is why things are slowly changing, Blake said.



The organization realized a federal law, the Uniformed Citizens Overseas 
Absentee Voting Act — initially developed to enable military voting while 
stationed abroad —  was exactly what its clientele needed.



“Many states developed and started implementing electronic ballot delivery 
systems,” she said. “After it was used in one or two elections successfully, 
legislation was passed to make that system available to all absentee voters. 
That’s when the NFB got involved and brought a suit against the state of 
Maryland to make this system available.”



The NFB won its case, which was appealed by security advocates with concerns 
about the integrity of the returned ballot. This is the argument most often 
levied against electronic return systems, said Blake.



“All of these security concerns are hypothetical. There’s no actual data to 
show that any of these systems have ever been breached or hacked in an 
election setting,” Blake said. “The judge agreed with us. It was appealed 
and we won there too. The system was first made available to voters with 
disabilities in the 2015 election.”



There are 27 states, including New Jersey, that use electronic ballots as a 
result of this suit. But only three states allow ballots to be returned 
electronically, making the process truly accessible to disabled voters: 
Delaware, West Virginia and Nevada.



Blake attributes the rarity of accessible voting to the fact that it’s still 
a relatively new concept.



“It’s difficult for some people to adapt to new systems. One small step at a 
time I guess,” Blake said. “Also some smaller jurisdictions don’t have the 
staff to be monitoring these systems They don’t have the staff to know how 
they work and how to upload things safely and establish best practices.”



Blake, who is also blind, can empathize with Melendez's experiences.



“Why do people think it’s OK for a blind voter to have to tell their choices 
to someone and trust that person to mark their ballot for them?” she said.

-- 

Respectfully,
Linda Melendez, 1st Vice President
National Federation of the Blind of New Jersey
Chair, Convention Activities
732-421-7063
lindamelendez220 at gmail.com 
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