February 14,2007
Center for People with Disabilities
1675 Range Street
Boulder, CO 80301
(303) 442-8662 phone/TP/
(303) 442-0502
www.cpwd-ilc.org

The Honorable Mike Coffman
Secretary of State
1700 Broadway
Denver, CO 80290

Dear Mr. Secretary:

Thank you for the opportunity to provide additional written testimony regarding electronic voting machines and voting in Colorado. Those of us who have spent some time working on voter accessibility and voting machines appreciate that you are addressing this topic early in your tenure as Secretary of State.

I am David Bolin, Executive Director of the Center for People With Disabilities (CPWD) in Boulder Colorado. CPWD provides advocacy and services to people with disabilities in Adams, Boulder, Broomfield, Gilpin and Jefferson Counties. We are in our thirtieth year of operation and have a long history of advocacy in our area.

In 2006, CPWD advocated with the Boulder County Board of County Commissioners on their choice of electronic voting machines to use in the 2006 elections. We also worked with the Clerk's office to ensure polling sites were accessible to people with disabilities. During a public hearing on the choice of electronic voting machines, we heard a lot of testimony regarding the need to have only paper ballots and even suggestions that these paper ballots be counted by hand. Many advocated that this was the best way to ensure a fair election with all votes being counted. CPWD advocated strongly for the new accessible voting machines that are required under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). I will go into our reasons below.

Most of CPWD's employees and volunteers are people with disabilities. Many had not voted privately and independently since acquiring their disabilities until the primary and general elections in 2006. Many people with disabilities, including people who are low-vision/blind and people who have no use of their hands, were dependent on someone else to read the ballot and mark the ballot for them prior to this last election cycle.

These people had family members, friends, election judges and others mark their ballots. Many times these people were complete strangers. The level of trust that their vote was cast ill the way they intended caused many people with disabilities to not vote at all. People with disabilities unable to access regular voting methods felt disenfranchised or dependent on others. People would report to us that family members would try to influence them to vote a particular way and many did not really know how their vote was marked.

Although I don't need to use an accessible voting machine, I have marked ballots for fellow employees over the years to ensure they could vote. I voted the way they instructed me to vote but knew they trusted me to follow their direction. I wondered if I would have that much trust in another person, especially if I thought they disagreed with me on an issue or a candidate. I think that is something everyone should consider. Disability is part of life; we have a saying that if you live long enough, you'll acquire a disability. The disability acquired may affect your ability to vote.

With the passage of HAVA and legislation in Colorado, accessible voting machines became required. Every county provided these machines and the Secretary of State dispersed grant funds to help counties afford the new machines and the new access requirements for voting sites. We in the disability community appreciated this effort to ensure our right to vote privately and independently. This is a fundamental right in our democracy.

We heard from many people that you couldn't trust technology, that hackers can change our votes, that the manufacturers all belonged and donated to a particular political party and that they would rig the election. We are a group of people that more than any other group is dependent on technology for our very lives. Members of our community utilize respirators to breathe, assistive technology computer programs to read our mail and to work, hearing aides to help us hear, adaptive equipment to get out of bed in the morning and many other pieces of both high and low tech that keep us living in our communities. Technology is something we welcome for its ability to enhance our independence and to allow us to work and thrive.

We can pursue the American Dream because technology frees us from some of our limitations. We know very well the limits of technology and have a healthy respect for those limits. The accessible voting machines used in our catchment area allowed people with disabilities to vote the way other citizens can vote; privately and independently. Our right to vote is just as important as any other citizen. We appreciated that fact that we could vote like other citizens maybe more than many. Like African Americans, we had to fight for the right to have accessible voting sites and for the ability to have a machine we could access and vote by ourselves. We appreciate the State of Colorado's support of that right to vote and particularly the Secretary of State's office for ensuring the implementation of HAVA in Colorado.

We have heard many arguments about how technology can be hacked into, how our votes can be changed, and how we should just stick to paper ballots and go back to hand counting those ballots. I have to say that Americans utilize the Internet to do their banking, to order merchandise, to make charitable donations, and to conduct a multitude of business activities. Indeed, the Secretary of State utilizes the Internet for business registrations, and many other activities in a secured environment. It is obvious that Americans do trust technology. I am one of those people who use the Internet for banking and bill paying. My money is very important to me and I do keep an eye on my accounts, and change passwords. Voting on an electronic voting machine that is not connected to the Internet seems much safer than online banking.

A paper ballot still relies on some form of technology to be cast and counted. Hand counting ballots is not an option because of the time constraints and the fact that more elections were rigged in hand counted situations than since the use of technology to count votes. I heard the argument that another manufacturer's machine was more accessible and used a paper ballot. The machine they talked about was the AutoMark. While this machine is accessible, it did not meet Colorado law. There was no way to independently "cast" your ballot. We heard that the DREs were not accessible, but we did not hear that from a person with a disability that would use the machine. We heard plenty of testimony from users of the machines about how wonderful they were and how happy they were to be able to vote independently again or for the first time in their lives.

As an organization, CPWD stands firmly behind the requirement for voting machines that are accessible to people with disabilities and that allow us to vote privately and independently. This is an issue that we will not back away from. We believe in the saying: "Vote as if your life depended on it, because it does".

Finally, in closing, I would like to briefly talk about the proposal to do Mail Ballots all the time. Mail ballots are inherently not accessible for people with disabilities. You have to mark the ballot in pen and then mail it. If you can't read the ballot, you are dependent on others to read it to you and then mark it for you. If you can't use your hands, how do you mark the ballot? Offering accessible machines in various locations means that people with disabilities have to travel to vote while other citizens do not. That is not equal access; that is separate and unequal.

CPWD is interested in continuing this conversation with you and your office and offers its assistance in continuing to have elections that are accessible to people with disabilities.

Sincerely,
David Bolin
Executive Director