Disabled Voters Sue to Get Accessible and Secret Voting

Disabled Voters Sue to Get Accessible and Secret Voting
 in California

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 1, 2006

CONTACT:
Lee Page
PVA (202) 416-7694

Dan Kysor, CCB (916) 371-1514 
Ardis Bazyn, CCB (818) 238-9321 
John McDermott, Howrey LLP (213) 892-1815 
Jim Dickson, AAPD (202) 262-8240 

San Francisco, CA - Voters with visual and manual disabilities 
filed suit today in San Francisco federal court against the 
California Secretary of State and five California counties, 
alleging failure to comply with historic federal legislation 
guaranteeing disabled voters the right to have a secret ballot 
and vote without assistance.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), 42 U.S.C. ' 15301, requires 
full accessibility in voting for disabled voters in the same 
manner as for all voters. This did not occur anywhere in the 
State in the June, 2006 elections nor will it occur in 
November. Thats why we filed suit, to enforce the new law 
said Lee Page, spokesman for the Paralyzed Veterans of America 
(PVA), a national veterans and disability organization that is 
the lead plaintiff in the suit. 

The suit seeks a declaratory judgment that California has 
failed to comply with HAVA. It also seeks an order requiring 
the California Secretary of State to present to the Court a 
plan and a timetable for bringing California into compliance 
with HAVA. 

The suit alleges that the Secretary of State has not approved 
any voting systems that ensure accessibility, privacy and 
independence for all disabled voters. It further alleges that 
the Secretary of State has approved individual voting systems 
that are not accessible to all disabled voters in the same 
manner as for other voters. 

For example, paralyzed veterans and quadriplegics in Marin, San 
Francisco and Santa Rosa counties cannot vote privately and on 
their own unless there is the proper voting system. Blind 
voters cannot verify the accuracy of their ballot because of 
Californias paper trail requirement. 

Three of the defendant counties--San Francisco, Marin and 
Sonoma, use the ES&S AutoMARK system that denies full 
accessibility to manually impaired voters. The availability of 
a direct recording electronic (DRE) machine at each polling 
location in combination with the AutoMARK would have permitted 
many of these manually impaired voters to vote privately, 
independently and without assistance. 

Alameda, another defendant county, uses DREs but is required by 
state law to use a paper audit trail as the official ballot in 
mandatory sample recounts, which denies accessibility to 
visually impaired voters. The suit challenges that state 
requirement as in conflict with federal law. 

Yolo, the fifth defendant county, did nothing at all to comply 
with HAVA for the June 2006 elections, denying both visually 
and manually impaired voters the right to vote privately and 
independently. Dan Kysor, a visually impaired plaintiff from 
Yolo County, commented, I was waiting with great anticipation 
for the opportunity guaranteed to me by federal law to finally 
be able to vote privately and independently like all other 
voters, and I am greatly disappointed that I was unable to do 
so in Yolo County in June. 

The plaintiffs include three national and state disability 
organizations--PVA, the California Council of the Blind (CCB) 
and the American Association of People with Disabilities 
(AAPD). The individual plaintiffs include Paul Longmore and 
Ivana Kirola from San Francisco County, Russ Bohlke from Marin 
County, Manny Fernandez from Sonoma County, Stephen Fort from 
Alameda County, and Dan Kysor from Yolo County. 

Founded in 1946, Paralyzed Veterans is the only congressionally 
chartered veterans service organization dedicated solely for 
the benefit and representation of veterans with spinal cord 
injury or disease. It is a dynamic, broad-based organization 
with more than 21,000 members in all 50 states, the District
of Columbia and Puerto Rico. To learn more about Paralyzed 
Veterans, visit its Web site at http://www.pva.org.

______________________________________________________________

For more Disability Vote Project - Accessible Voting Machines
 news, see:
http://www.aapd.com/dvpmain/votemachines/indexmachines.php

# # #

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the American Association of People with Disabilities. To 
contact Gwen, please email her at JFAgwen@aol.com.

JOIN AAPD! There's strength in numbers! Be a part of a national
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