ID: Photo of DDP's executive director, Dessa Cosma, posing for a photo in her wheelchair in front of a mural.
“‘I would argue that the majority of non-disabled voters, you go and you vote, you get your sticker and you think nothing more about it,’ said Dessa Cosma, founder and executive director of DDP, which advocates for better access to voting and other civic processes. ‘But that’s the whole story of being disabled. When the world wasn’t designed for you, you’re constantly having to consciously navigate it.’
Just last week, Michigan’s Department of State acknowledged that some people who use voter assist terminals to cast ballots won’t have the same options for straight-ticket voting as other voters do. The problem involves VATs made by Dominion Voting Systems, which are used in 65 of Michigan’s 83 counties to allow voters to mark a ballot using a computer with a touch screen and other assistive controls.
In general elections, Michigan voters who use the normal paper ballots have the option to select a ‘straight party’ option that automatically selects all candidates from the same party, and they can override that selection for individual races where they wish to cross party lines. But on the Dominion VATs, voters who split their tickets like that will get an error message, forcing them to deselect the straight party option and instead vote in each race individually.
It’s not possible to fix the program at this point, the Department of State said Friday. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Monday that the problem affected Dominion machines nationwide, but only the VATs — not any other machine.”
Comments