Blind decry bid to stall paper ballot

A group of blind residents is protesting a proposal in the Legislature to delay voting by paper ballot until 2016 for voters with physical disabilities.

Lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Crist mandated in 2007 that all of Florida's 67 counties switch to voting by paper ballot, in response to widespread complaints about the accuracy of voting by touch screen. But the law delayed until 2012 the deadline for providing paper ballots accessible to those with physical disabilities, since it would require purchasing additional equipment.

Today, only four counties - Hillsborough, Pinellas, Sarasota and Duval - have purchased the equipment enabling people with disabilities to mark and cast a paper ballot, as other voters do. The remaining 63 counties are pressing for a new deadline of 2016. The time extension now appears in the Senate's main election bill; a House hearing on the provision was delayed Wednesday but is expected to be rescheduled soon.

"For four years, we will have been asked to vote on equipment that has been deemed unfit for voting by the general public," said Debbie Grubb of Bradenton, president of the Florida Council of the Blind. "We don't want four more years."

Secretary of State Kurt Browning and Gov. Charlie Crist agree with Grubb and are asking lawmakers to leave the 2012 deadline where it is.

"They have had five years to comply, and it needs to be complied with," Browning spokeswoman Jennifer Davis said.

But given the price of compliance - about $45 million for 63 counties - and the dire financial straits in which many districts find themselves, nearly all of the state's counties and elections supervisors are pressing for the extension.

"Obviously, the economy has changed a bit in the past four or five years," said Ron Labasky, a lobbyist representing the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections. "That cost is real; we're going to have to write the checks to purchase this stuff."

Labasky also noted that, unlike Grubb's coalition, some groups representing people with other physical disabilities are not satisfied with existing voting technology that the state has certified for their use. Among those groups is the American Association of People with Disabilities, which said in a November letter that if a time extension is granted, a better option may arise for voters with physical challenges.

That's not acceptable to Grubb's group or the Florida Voters Coalition, both of which blasted the counties Wednesday for requesting the delay.

"We want access that is achievable now," Grubb said. "We don't want to play games anymore."