Jacksonville, Florida, improves voting access

From the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville:

There was a time when anyone could hear who Dan O'Connor voted for in elections.

With a paper ballot that required the assistance of a seeing or able-bodied person to fill it out, there were no secret ballots for O'Connor and many other voters with physical disabilities in Duval County.

"I would go to the polling place to cast a ballot with another person, whether my wife or someone else, wondering, how much are people hearing?" O'Connor said.

There were other barriers, too: A 2003 survey showed that only seven of the city's polling places were compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, potentially blocking access for people who used wheelchairs or walkers.

Much has changed since.

A lawsuit was filed against Duval County's supervisor of elections in 2001, claiming discrimination. In 2002, the Help America Vote Act mandated better accessibility and provided funding. Gov. Jeb Bush installed a new supervisor in 2004.

After Jerry Holland was elected supervisor in 2005, he said every polling place and early voting site was evaluated and made ADA compliant. The county brought in touch screens for people with disabilities to vote, but the governor later outlawed their use. So the elections office switched to AutoMARK, an electronic system that marks the paper ballot for the person.

By last November's election, every polling place in Duval County was accessible and all had adaptive voting machines that allowed people with disabilities to vote by themselves.

The changes, including the now-unused touch screens, cost about $3 million since 2005. And those changes have been tremendous, said O'Connor, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit who now sits on an advisory committee.

The AutoMARK machines have headphones and can be used by people with visual impairments, people who cannot use their hands or who have learning disabilities, among others.

The situation is not as rosy nationwide, where, according to a government report released Wednesday, a third of polling places failed to accommodate voters in wheelchairs and nearly a quarter gave people with disabilities less privacy in the voting booth.

The Government Accountability Office study of 730 polling places in 31 states found that 73 percent of polling places had some sort of impediment, such as narrow doorways or steep curbs, that might impede access to the voting area for people with disabilities, The Associated Press reported.

O'Connor said he believed that the 2000 presidential election highlighted many of the voting problems in the state - and got them fixed.

"While Florida kind of became a laughingstock about the election," he said, "if you think about it, if it wasn't that close of an election, would we even be talking about accessibility?"