RE: Hand Recounts of votes recorded on DREs
At 07:22 PM 12/5/2004 -0800, David Aragon wrote:
>And in that formulation, it's not clear that it's absurd at
>all -- it's reasonably easy to transcribe, is an independent
>physical record of the choices, and doesn't depend on the
>voter's ability to see or read. So it's not as far-out as
>all that.
But does depend on their being able to hear, or speak clearly. It would
record language choices - meaning that the record of the vote is no longer
neutral and free of any record of accessibility options used to cast that
vote. It depends on a room which is quiet enough to hear a recording (there
were complaints about that in this election).
The advantage is that it would require that all machines have an audio
option that is available to everyone, and which preserves everyone's privacy.
Gregg Vanderheiden makes the point that there are many people who would
benefit from design features we now label as "for people with disabilities"
-- for example, an audio ballot would help those who cannot read, and yet
there is long evidence that illiteracy is often a hidden and unadmitted
disability.
Once again --- if we thought about the whole set of requirements
(accessiblity, recounts, privacy, usability as well as the "functional"
requirements) as one, we could design a system that was not a series of
layers of bandaids, each solving problems created by the previous layer.
Whitney Quesenbery
Whitney Interactive Design, LLC
w. www.WQusability.com
e. whitneyq at wqusability.com
p. 908-638-5467
UPA - www.usabilityprofessionals.org
STC Usability SIG: www.stcsig.org/usability