Submission to the Justice and Electoral Select Committee. February 2005.

The need for equitable voting systems

The Foundation welcomes this inquiry into local authority elections and believes that it provides an opportunity to ensure that blind and vision-impaired citizens can enjoy the same degree of access, independence and privacy available to sighted voters. Current electoral practices make it difficult for people who cannot read print to exercise their right to vote in an equitable way. This will be a growing problem over the next two decades as baby boomers hit the age group within which vision problems often become manifest.

Increasing voter participation

It should be remembered that there are many more persons in New Zealand who are vision impaired than are members of the Foundation. Improving the accessibility of local authority elections for Foundation members is likely to increase voter participation across society (e.g. among people with literacy problems or reading disabilities, or for whom English is a second language). Information that is tailored for one group often meets the needs of another.

What makes it difficult for blind and vision-impaired people to vote in local authority elections?

Blind and vision-impaired voters can use the provisions of the Local Electoral Regulations 2002 (SR 2001/145) s.34 "Specified difficulties in voting" to authorise a person to assist them with voting. In some parts of the country voters do not have to visit a polling booth to cast their vote, and postal voting does enable a voter to take time to consider and fill in the voting forms at home.

Blind and vision-impaired people nevertheless continue to encounter barriers that hinder or even discourage their voting. Some of these barriers are acknowledged by the Chief Electoral Office in its Disability Action Plan. The barriers also exist when voting in other than general elections.

Barriers to voting

• Inadequate information on voting rights and electoral processes, and uneven or no access to candidate profile statements.
• Difficulties reading and completing voting papers independently and in secret.
• Inaccessible voting systems and places.

Candidate profile statements

At the time of the 2004 local authority elections blind and vision-impaired individuals commented to the Foundation that they had great difficulty accessing candidate profile statements. These were printed and distributed in small print, and were too long a read for most blind people to ask a family member or volunteer to read aloud or on to tape in full. Although much candidate information was available on the internet, this varied from one authority to another and was not consistently presented in forms accessible to people using adaptive technology. The Foundation estimates that although internet use by blind and vision-impaired New Zealanders is increasing, fewer than 500 of its members would have been able to locate and use candidate information on the internet.

Accessible information

Systems based on standard print and printed ballot papers cannot fully address the barriers to voting which exist for people who cannot read standard print. Blind people read through audio or braille, or via computers loaded with adaptive technology, e.g. braille or speech output.

Independent voting by telephone

The Foundation recommends telephone voting as an option for blind and vision-impaired voters. It is already a method widely used by New Zealand shareholders to elect company representatives, and it has recently been tested in local authority elections in Britain. The Foundation itself is in the process of trialling secure, independent voting by telephone using its Telephone Information Service (TIS), and seeks to explore further the options for this method to be employed in local authority elections.

Internet voting

The Foundation considers internet voting an important means of increasing voter access. Like voting by telephone, the internet would allow blind and vision-impaired New Zealanders to exercise their right to vote independently and in secret. However, socio-economic factors (e.g. 68% of our members are over the age of 65) mean that far fewer blind people have access to internet capable computers than to the telephone. It is for this reason that the Foundation prioritises phone voting ahead of internet voting.

However, the Chief Electoral Office has signalled its intention to trial online voting in the 2008 general election, subject to Parliament's approval. A similar trial should be undertaken for local authority elections.

Electronic voting in booths

The Foundation believes that in the longer term electronic voting could become the standard for the majority of voters. Even within polling booths, there could be machines designed along the lines of talking automatic teller machines: the blind voter would plug headphones into the machine and listen to synthetic speech instructions in complete privacy.

Braille voting

The third voting option which the Foundation endorses is voting by braille. Braille ballots have been successfully used as a means of voting for the Foundation's Board of Directors. A special voting pack produced for braille readers allowed totally blind people to vote for the first time without needing help from a sighted person. While braille-card voting would not assist voters who cannot read braille, it would increase the degree of access, confidentiality and independence available to some blind and deafblind voters. The number of local authorities and district health boards means that the braille voting option could feasibly be provided only on a negotiated basis. The Foundation requests that in the interests of equity this option not be immediately dismissed as unworkable or too expensive, and that it be explored further between the Department of Internal Affairs and the Foundation.

Provision of electoral information

In order to participate in elections, blind, deafblind, vision-impaired, and other print-disabled voters must be able to access independently the range of electoral information available to the community generally. In its areas of responsibility, the Chief Electoral Office is developing strategies for communicating information to disabled voters.

Information required by voters includes details of voter entitlement and registration, territorial areas and voting process, the candidate profile statements (see the Local Electoral Act 2001 s.61), and any other brochures disseminated for the attention of voters. Such information needs to be in a range of formats: audio, braille, large print, and electronic text. Large print versions must be designed so that the font is of adequate size, and not compromised by any background images; high gloss paper is unacceptable because of the way light shines on it and prevents readers from further magnifying the text. Web versions must conform to government web accessibility standards and must offer any downloads in text or Word as well as PDF options.

The Foundation recommends that an XML publishing solution is developed for creating, storing, and providing election information to partner bodies. The use of Extensible Mark Up Language would assist the timely conversion of content into formats such as HTML for web sites, braille and synthetic speech files (the latter to be delivered via the Foundation’s Telephone Information Service).

Voting places

Standards for the accessibility of voting places used in local authority elections should be applied. Specifications should cover physical access (parking, access routes, entrances, internal routes), signs, lighting, furniture, and directional assistance from staff. Disability awareness training for local authority staff responsible for managing voting and providing support to voters would be beneficial to voters and give staff confidence in their own ability to assist voters who are blind or vision impaired. Deafblind voters are likely to require particularly targeted assistance. Again, the Chief Electoral Office is reviewing its voting place arrangements and accessibility checklists.

Conclusion

The Foundation endorses the need to review the accessibility of voting for people with disabilities, and of course with special regard to those whose vision impairment or blindness prevents them from reading standard print. That is the focus of our submission, although improving the accessibility of the elections would have a positive effect on voter participation across the board.

The Foundation believes that an action plan should be developed to ensure the accessibility of voting in local authority and district health board elections, consistent with the aims of the New Zealand Disability Strategy. The plan would address the key obstacles of information that is not currently accessible and voting systems that cannot be independently used by blind, vision-impaired, and deafblind citizens. The Foundation can advise on and develop a programme of awareness training for staff who will interact with blind, vision-impaired and deafblind voters.

The Foundation is keen to see local body elections in 2007 that are truly accessible for New Zealand’s blind, deafblind and vision-impaired voters.