Voting: On the importance of process

A reminder of why the nation continues to wrestle with the technology of voting machines. From seattlepi.com:

Like other vote-by-mail counties, King County will leave a few open to allow disabled people to continue voting with a new generation of machines. And in future years, they'll be left open for 20 days before elections -- not for nostalgia, but to allow some such as 55-year-old Gary Pearson -- who has used a wheelchair since he was 19 -- to vote with dignity.

On Tuesday, Pearson will wheel himself down the block from his house in Wedgwood to use the polling place at Decatur Elementary School. Partially paralyzed, he'll push a touch screen with his wrist to cast his vote. He will not need somebody to push pins through ballots or color in bubbles on a ballot.

And he'll vote like most of us -- privately.

Although results are the focal point of elections, for some such as Pearson, the actual voting process means a lot.

The process means more than the actual vote or election outcome, in my opinion. Anyway:

The old machines -- in which voters punched a card with a pin -- were too high up to see the candidates' names. He couldn't punch the cards, anyway, with his hands hobbled. The same was true when new machines required filling in bubbles.

For others, voting-booth curtains close for privacy while voting. He'd have to ask his young sons to do it for him. Or he'd ask a poll worker.

Some use an elbow to push the screen, or a pin held in their mouths, Pearson said. Absentee ballots were a possibility, but difficult....

The new machines also allow blind people to vote with more independence. Blind voters can wear headsets and respond to a voice reading choices using a keypad. King County does not have absentee ballots in Braille, and because many blind people do not read Braille, the machines are a better option.

"I hear excited utterances (about the machines) all the time because they can vote privately for the first time," David Lord, president of Disability Rights of Washington, said.

I written previously on the importance of having a polling place with election officials to go to, as opposed to relying solely on mail-in ballots here and here.