Supervisor: Plans lawsuit against manufacturer of voting system

[Robbien]

The Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. --
The Duval County elections supervisor testified Friday that he intends to sue the manufacturer of the county's voting system because ballot machines accessible to blind voters don't have the necessary certification to be used.

John Stafford told a federal judge that he is planning the lawsuit against North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems for failing to get state certification for machines accessible to blind voters as repeatedly promised.

"We had a system with audio capabilities that wasn't certified at the time. We had every indication that it would be certified," Stafford testified. "We have the machines ready to go. ... We are still awaiting certification."

Visually and physically impaired voters sued Stafford in 2001 after he purchased optical scan voting equipment from Diebold. The plaintiffs want touch screen equipment with an audio component that would allow them to vote independently without assistance. Senior U.S. District Judge Wayne Alley is hearing the non-jury trial.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030926/APN/309261036

the rest of the article is great, it kills me to only post the first four paragraphs

[Nottingham]

1. Great article! To expect a disabled person to travel to vote

downtown is punishing them for being disabled! :bounce:

[DemVet]

7. Uhh......no.

I'm familiar with the ADA since I use it myself for my own disability from time to time. Say what you want about the reliability of Diebold systems or how they're corrupt, that's fine. But having a disabled person leave his place of residence to go vote is not in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act as long is there is some place that that person can vote at in his community. With all the volunteers on election day, I don't imagine getting a ride would be difficult either. :)

[ParanoidPat]

2. Mark my words.....

.....this lawsuit is a pretext to go after the Black Box Voting crowd for damages. Liebold will try to claim that they couldn't get the system certified in time due to their software being 'stolen' and 'compromised'.
Someone should do a search for 'Duval' in the memo stash. I guess they forgot the public statements they made claiming that the software that was examined by the Johns Hopkins and Rice University team was in their own words 'outdated and never used in an election'. :evilgrin:

[dusty64]

3. We need LOTS

of lawsuits in order for the truth to get out.

[Don_G]

4. Diebold Is Full Of BS

Every drive-through ATM I've seen is also marked in braille (why I don't know) and as a manufacturer of ATM's they can easily apply the same standards and solutions to their BBV's.

[PNAC_butter_jelly]

5. Why not just use plain old paper

and have all disabled people vote absentee.. Surely they have SOMEONE in their lives that they trust to help them.. Instead of risking EVERYONE'S votes so that the polling places are "handicapped friendly", whay not just keep it SIMPLE and EASY and Re-countable.:)

Absentee ballots were created for that very reason..so that people who could not get to the polls would still be able to vote..

I would rather see millions of dollars spent to hire actual people to work on election days instead of throwing it down a rat hole so that it goes into the pockets of republican voting machine executives..

[shirlden]

6. Forget where I read this, but

There is one county here in the U.S. that has bought just three Dre machines for the handicapped and they are going to put them in vans and take the voting booth to the handicapped who can't other wise get to the polling place. Now that sounds like a great idea. It saves millions in dollars and more than assures that the handicapped will have not just equal but a better than equal opportunity to vote. I love the idea.
It is good to know that not everyone in this country is devoid of common sense. Of course, we know that Liebold never worries about having "certified" machines. A few law suits might just be the "common sense" thing to do.

:argh: