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Vote in the KCD Election

Additional info about transportation for in-person voting for accessibility reasons

RantWoman's previous post

The RantWomen did not vote in the King County Conservation District Election this evening.

RantMom did not vote at all.

After conversation about how many of RantMom's retirement community neighbors would probably just as soon have paper and not have to think about technology, RantWoman cajoled RantMom into trying to vote on her phone. RantMom uses no assistive technology measures, not even a little print enlargement. So RantWoman figured it would be possible to test the Android app and the signing pathway.

RantWoman was WRONG.  RantWoman sent RantMom the link straight out of her search engine. RantWoman cheerleaded while RantMom needed 3 tries to pull up her voting record. RantMom read the candidate descriptions and made sensible observations while RantWoman steadfastly refused to tell her how to vote. RantWoman reassured RantMom: RantWoman trusts this trial enough for this election even though there are MANY things still to work out. Everything looked smooth until....the signature page. RantMom's phone instructed her to turn her phone on its side to sign. RantMom turned her phone on its side but nothing happened with autorotate.

RantWoman suggested the two-finger pulldown from the top. On RantWoman's Pixel phone this yields a row of icons including one that turns autorotate on or off. RantWoman loves autorotate and leaves it on all the time. RantWoman does not know (RantMom doesn't either) what brand of phone RantMom has but the same gesture did not yield autorotate. It did yield a settings icon and RantWoman made a game attempt to squint at the options. The labels are completely different. RantWoman decided "We're done." This is more fussing than an average user should even have to think about. We're Done!

RantWoman did not vote a second time.

While RantMom was poking around, RantWoman also decided to try various things with the portal.

RantWoman spent a morning bus ride wondering "What about language access? What about the languages King County is required (by the Voting Rights Act, RantWoman thinks) to provide translations of voting materials in? So imagine RantWoman's delight. On her Android phone, though not in the Windows version, there is a button that says translate. There are itty bitty icons that reflect a number of languages spoken in King County. RantWoman found both Spanish and Russian, languages RantWoman has officially studied. The translations all looked decent to RantWoman's not native speaker ears. Talkback not only read those translations it also read the names of other languages available and the text.

RantWoman found one interesting oops. On the Russian page a phone number is supposed to be 206.296.VOTE. VOTE got translated into Russian, which would make NO sense except that the dial numbers appeard alongside the text.

Then RantWoman went to try the actual ballot. RantWoman has already voted. RantWoman things the portal letting her try to pull up her record again is possibly problematic. RantWoman did not step all the way through to see whether she would get an error message if she tried to submit a second ballot. RantWoman just decided "We're Done. This probably should not be happening."

RantWoman says probably because RantWoman can see situations where someone might lose and want to reprint a paper ballot. RantWoman can also see situations where one person might want to print ballots for many people such as RantMom's tech-loathing retirement community neighbors. RantWoman thinks this conversation now needs more of a trained professional to talk through some different use cases and how to deal with the possibilities that might arise.

More back story and RantWoman opinionating.

RantWoman frequently has Sunday supper with RantMom at a retirement community. We dine tolerably. We talk of many things.

Tonight, because one of RantMom's hallmates is going all in for Bloomberg, we talked of the Bloomberg campaign and what we do or do not like about billionaires, even sensible billionaires buying their way into public office.

We talked of the DemocracyLive project to run the King County Conservation District election. We are both wondering, given our history of mother-daughter voting party habits, given that this is an annual election, whether we have somehow missed this election previously, for instance when there is some kind of levy vote in February. RantWoman also tends not even to vote in races where there is only one candidate so RantWoman would not mind knowing what the county sees as reasons for the low turnout.

RantMom is probably uninterested in RantWoman's full perspective on blind people and voting but it is important for people wanting to insist on paper-only voting.

Think hanging chads?

Think previous incarnations of accessible voting, the electronic vesion with paper tape backup. Remember, RantWoman has been a poll judget and remembers a number of elections where RantWoman specifically helped set up and staff the Accessible Voting Unit. The AVU collected votes electronically ahd had a paper tape backup. RantWoman remembers some issues with things not getting recorded on the tape.

RantWoman has no information of any kind about how those accessible voting units performed in the overall election process. RantWoman does have information about how rabidly excited many blind people when the Help America Vote Act brought substantial progress in accessible voting.

RantWoman remembers computer scientists writing articles about how  they could hack one vendor's system basically with their eyes closed and their brains tied behind them. Actual blind people said "Well you figure all that out. We are just thrilled to be able to vote on our own in private without a small village of poll judges and partisan observers looking over our shoulders !"

RantWoman's view: LOTS of people would be interested in online voting. Kicking the tires of this trial is a really good idea. Now, what next?