Response to American Association of People With Disabilities Allegations About Verified Voting Foundation

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6019

Response to American Association of People With Disabilities Allegations About Verified Voting Foundation
Verified Voting Foundation
June 20th, 2005

To: Mr. Andrew Imperato
President and Chief Executive Officer
American Association of People with Disabilities

cc: Jim Dickson, Angela Katsakis, Dr. Jonathan Young

Dear Mr. Imperato,

We ask that the following message be posted to the Justice for All mailing list no later than 1 P.M. EDT on Monday, June 20, to correct serious misinformation that was distributed over that mailing list by your organization last Thursday. Since the original post requested that constituents attend the Senate hearing Tuesday, this message should be sent rapidly so that those individuals have the correct information when attending the hearing.

Thank you,

Will Doherty
Executive Director
Verified Voting Foundation and VerifiedVoting.org

Subject: Correction to "Backlash against accessible voting" Message

On June 16, Angela Katsakis, Disability Vote Project Coordinator for the AAPD, posted a message entitled "Backlash against accessible voting" to the AAPD-affiliated Email listserv, "Justice for All" (the posting can be found at http://www.jfanow.org/jfanow/index.php?mode=A&id=2326;&sort=D ) (mirror). This message is intended to correct information posted inadvertently in that message.

The statement in the email that "Other organizations, like Verified Voting, are demanding that all accessible voting machines be banned and that voting be conducted only with paper" is incorrect. Neither the Verified Voting Foundation nor VerifiedVoting.org has ever made any such demand.

In fact, the organizations call for voting systems to be accessible and have worked to have accessibility language included in many state and federal bills. Their statement in support of accessible voting systems has been posted on their website for at least a year: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.asp?id=1875

The Verified Voting Foundation and VerifiedVoting.org are committed to working in support of verifiable AND ACCESSIBLE voting, and to working with disability organizations to ensure that all voters have access to a voting system that we all can trust. There is no need for conflict between verifiability and accessibility of voting systems.

For more information, see Voting Accessibility Resources: Improving Voting Systems for Disabled People.