Voters with disabilities will have better access to ballots, including the ability to vote electronically, as for the first time in Hawaii’s history, a voter with disability or special needs can request an electronic ballot.
A provision of Act 136, Hawaii’s mail voting law was only restricted to the overseas military access to this service. But now people with disabilities can ask for a ballot to be emailed as an HTML file that they can access with assistive technology.
The ballots need to be printed and signed before they’re returned. Hawaii, along with 19 other states, allows those ballots to be returned by email, but Hawaii is one of the few that also grants that privilege to disabled voters, who can scan their ballots and email them.
Virgil Stinnett is looking forward to voting at home, saving him a trip through Honolulu to get to a polling location before the August 8 primary.
For blind voters like Stinnett, who value their independence, a new option to cast an electronic ballot with assistive technology means greater freedom, according to a news report.
Stinnett, who serves as president of the Hawaii chapter for the National Federation of the Blind, says he’s grateful that elections officials and the Legislature had the forethought to give voters that kind of access with electronic ballots, which the state calls alternate format ballots.
Stinnett said there are between 12,000 and 13,000, blind individuals in Hawaii, but probably more who are legally blind, or those who can see somewhat but still have poor vision even with corrective lenses.
Both mail-voting systems and traditional in-person voting come with their own problems, said Michelle Bishop, an advocate at the National Disability Rights Network.
“There are many types of disabilities, and they all come with their own access needs,” Bishop said. “No two people with the same disability experience it the same way. … Really, we have an obligation to make sure every method we’re offering voters is as accessible as we can possibly make it.”
