New voting equipment helps citizens with vision, hearing problems
Published: March 21, 2005
Breakthrough technology allows voters with vision and hearing impairments to cast ballots without assistance.
AutoMARK Voter Assist Terminal is a touchscreen machine using large print, synthetic speech, function keys marked with braille, earphones.
Such sleek, computerized equipment provides a privacy for impaired voters that has been missing.
“It’s an issue of respect,” Cerro Gordo County auditor Ken Kline said today while a machine was demonstrated.
“They can use this machine without assistance and their ballots cannot be discerned from any other voter,” he said.
AutoMARK is programmed in seven different languages, does not allow an over-vote, and has provision for write-in ballots on a keyboard screen.
“This machine even allows a quadraplegic, using a wand or a sip/puff device to mark their ballot,” said Dan Erker of Election System & Software.
When finished, the machine prints out a paper ballot “so these votes will be counted with all the other ballots from that precinct,” Erker said.
Federal law mandates that, by January 2006, every voting precinct in the country have at least one terminal that allows hearing and visually impaired voters to cast ballots without help.
Cerro Gordo County needs one of the terminals for each of the 26 precincts “and at least one for a back up,” Kline said, putting the price tag at about $135,000.
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