Voting In Elections

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IN TOUCH – Voting in Elections

TX: 03.11.20 2040-2100

PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

PRODUCER: MIKE YOUNG

White

Good evening. Over the next few hours in what’s being seen as an election of huge significance, not just for the US but for the world, we’ll begin to find out how America has voted. Now for most that question means – who did they vote for – but for visually impaired Americans it also means, quite simply, what method did you use to cast your vote and how secret and independent was it. Later, we’ll be crossing the pond to find the answers to those questions. But for In Touch listeners this seemed the ideal night to shine a light on what’s happening here in the UK and whether we have a voting system for blind and partially sighted people that stands up to democratic scrutiny.

We owe the fact that we can look at this issue with any degree of optimism to a lady from Norfolk – Rachael Andrews. Last year Rachael sought a judicial review of the voting process, claiming that her right to a secret and independent vote had been breached. She won. Her case hinged on the use of a TVD or tactile voting device. Now by law these should be available in every polling station in the country, the plastic device has a row of signature sized compartments and the idea is that you place it over your polling card and mark your favoured candidate. Rachael told us what triggered her case.

Andrews

There is no way of having a secret vote, you have to have somebody next to you reading it out and then you try and mark accordingly. And I often found, also, that because the tactile voting templates, I’ve had different designs – I’ve had the lift up flap box one and I’ve also had one that had some sort of saw tooth arrangement – you can’t tell, always, where you are, even marking it. So, it’s impossible to get a private independent vote and that’s why I brought the case.

There are many different technological advances now that would involve not a lot of money, I don’t think, and would allow me and my husband and several of my friends and all visually impaired people to vote independently.

White

Rachael Andrews.

Well giving judgement in the High Court Mr Justice Swift agreed with Rachael. He said: “To meet legal obligations under the Representation of the People Act the device must allow the blind voter to mark the ballot paper against the name of her candidate of choice, without any need for assistance.” The conclusion – the law was being broken by the UK government.

Following the ruling in May 2019, RNIB began working with the government to try to find a suitable lawful alternative to the current provisions. However, when a snap General Election was called in December it was decided that there wasn’t enough time to find a fully accessible voting solution before polling day. In a survey conducted by the RNIB since then only around one in 10 blind or almost blind people felt they were able to vote secretly and independently, and less than half of those with partial sight.

So, with the next lot of elections – covid permitting – due in May 2021 what are the options. Well I’ll be bringing in the Chair of the RNIB and the Minister for Constitutional Affairs in a moment but first, let’s hear the views of two visually impaired voters – Anna Rigby, who’s totally blind and Holly Mathis who has some sight. Anna, what have your experiences been like?

Rigby

I have never been able to vote secretly and independently. I have looked at the tactile voting device, I think it’s completely unfit for purpose because you need somebody to put the voting paper the right way round, then you have to line it up, you have to actually check with someone that it is lined up properly. Once you’ve had the candidates read out to you and you’ve chosen your tick box and you’ve ticked your box you have to then really ask the person again that the pen’s actually worked and that you’ve ticked the box. I’ve actually not bothered with it; I usually just get the member of staff at the polling station to tick the box for me and just hope that I can trust them to do it properly.

White

So, you just accept that you’re not going to have an independent vote basically – a secret vote?

Rigby

I’ve got no choice, that’s the only way I can vote.

White

And what would you like to see instead?

Rigby

I would like to see a system where I can vote completely independently, where I get the voting information beforehand and in an ideal world, really, there should be a system that’s either electronic, i.e. maybe a button press system at the polling station it could be or it could be a system over the telephone or it can be online. A pen needing to be used, as a totally blind person, is a total joke.

White

Let me bring in Holly. Now you have some sight and you’re originally from the United States. What is it about voting in the UK that you’ve found so difficult?

Mathis

Every single time I’ve voted in person I’ve had a really disappointing experience from the polling staff. The first time I went with my husband, who’s British, and because he was there, I think the staff were quite happy to kind of leave me to him to sort out. So, they – apart from asking for our names and addresses separately, they just carried on their own conversation. I wasn’t offered any kind of help or given any options of what might be available as a partially sighted voter. I use a white cane, so to them they’ve no idea if I have any sight at all. They handed the ballot out to me without saying that it was there, so just held their hand in the air. And my husband had to take the ballot from them and explained to me that he had it and hand it to me. He had to lead me over to the polling booth. But then I had to get the vote from the polling booth to the ballot box, which is a big black box sitting on the table that has a small black slot in it. I had to fumble around myself.

White

So, really it is the attitude rather than the method of voting for you?

Mathis

Yes, I’m lucky that I am able to see well enough to be confident I’m casting my vote for the person I want but everything in the process was really stressful.

White

Let me bring in Eleanor Southwood, who is Chair of the RNIB. Tell us a bit more about the findings in your survey.

Southwood

The numbers are pretty stark aren’t they, I mean if only one in 10 of us who are totally blind feels able to vote independently and in secret, which I think as both Anna and Holly have made clear, is a fundamental right for us, I think that’s pretty shocking. We also know that lots of people walk away from the polling station having voted in some way shape or form but not being entirely confident that they have voted for who they wanted to. Holly’s also talked about the experience with polling station staff who often perhaps are unfamiliar with even the tactile device, which as you’ve outlined is sort of woefully inadequate as it is but at least does exist. So, huge issues for people in knowing who the candidates are and where the polling station is, of course, because polling cards aren’t accessible either. Knowing who’s standing for election and being able to make a choice and the all important being able to cast the actual ballot.

White

There are alternative ways of voting for visually impaired people. There are postal votes, for example, there are proxy votes. Are visually impaired people making enough use of these?

Southwood

We don’t think it’s right that you would feel sort of forced into choosing a postal or proxy because it’s such a difficult, stressful and often quite sort of undignified experience attempting to exercise your democratic right. Of course for lots of people a postal vote is more accessible, perhaps because the lighting in your home you can set it up so you can actually access the ballot form and all the instructions that come with it, often which are quite complicated, but for lots of us it doesn’t change the issue at all because it’s still the same ballot paper, it’s still the same issues about getting information about candidates and casting your ballot.

White

So, what kind of solutions have you looked at, because you’re having these talks with the Cabinet Office, and of those what do visually impaired people say they want?

Southwood

There’s a huge range of views on what would be ideal and it’s important to say that we are really pleased that the government are committed to finally addressing this. We’ve talked with the Cabinet Office about a range of options. At the moment electronic voting isn’t an option here and so the option that is coming through as the favourite, if you like, and the one that will be going into user testing really quickly in the next couple of weeks, is an audio device. So, you go into the polling station, you’re given an audio device where you can listen to the candidates listed, so you know both the candidate’s name, their party and which number they are on the ballot paper and that would then be used in conjunction with the tactile voting device, if that’s your choice or of course, lots of people want to use their own magnifiers or perhaps an app on your smartphone to actually cast the ballot.

White

So, you take in a piece of equipment and then have the order of the voters in your ears as you vote, is that right?

Southwood

Exactly right. So, you can listen again, take the time that you need to familiarise yourself with the candidates. We’re also really keen that lists of candidates are published electronically in advance, we don’t see any reason why they can’t be but very often they’re not, so that you can, at least, have a sense before you go to the polling station where there’s often quite a lot to think about in any case.

White

Let me bring in Chloe Smith, she’s Minister at the Cabinet Office, with responsibility for Constitutional Affairs. Minister, you’ve been listening to all this, it’s not good, is it, for a government to be told by a judge that it’s breaking electoral law?

Smith

Well, I mean, I think, the main point is that it’s high time to make this change and I’m really excited, actually, about the work being done with Eleanor and her colleagues at the RNIB because I hope we can finally now make a difference on this.

White

So, this audio solution that we’ve heard about – in May 2021 there are local council elections and also the election of some directly elected mayors, how practical will it be to have this audio system available by May 2021, so someone like Anna or Holly, for that matter, could use it?

Smith

Well we’re working hard to make sure that’s the case. We are doing a lot of testing at the moment, we’re obviously having to work through issues that might relate to coronavirus or any other changes in the meantime, so I wouldn’t want to play that down.

White

Is there a cost issue there because presumably you’ll have to have this equipment in every polling station?

Smith

Well of course there is a cost issue but that’s not important actually because a. this is a legal duty but b. it’s a moral duty and we’re going to get this done. If I may, I want to just point out something else that really is a key issue drawn out by Holly’s comments actually about how the staff at polling stations also could benefit from more training…

White

I was going to ask you about that, yes.

Smith

Well exactly, I mean Holly’s story is really, really concerning obviously and one of the pieces of work I am doing – and again with the RNIB and others – is to get the training right for polling station staff, that’s a really important part of the package.

White

Thanks for the time being. We will come back to you. Meanwhile, the devolved nations are also seeking their own solutions to this problem. Scotland has elections in 2021 for all members of the Scottish Parliament and last June the Scottish Parliament voted to set up pilots to test the viability of electronic voting methods for people with disabilities.

Graham Day, he’s the Minister for Parliamentary Business, told me what should now happen as a result of this vote.

Day

The voter accesses an online website, using a unique code. The completed vote automatically converts into an encrypted QR code, that contains the voter’s choice. A printed document’s then produced with the encrypted QR code on it, then there would be a number of options for the voter to submit the printed version without risking any possibility of revealing the vote or they could send the QR code electronically.

White

What does it actually mean to the voter, what would they be able to do?

Day

I guess the simple way of putting it is to vote in secret, perhaps in their own home, using an electronic device and then to submit their vote without having to require the assistance of anyone else which takes us that large step closer to treating voters with a visual impairment in the same way as anyone else.

White

Chloe Smith, are you working with, talking to, the devolved nations?

Smith

Yes, that’s absolutely right. There’s a devolved element of this and a national element to this. We do all need to work together to make sure that this actually happens. So, we are doing that and doing that with full understanding of how important this is to get right.

White

Chloe Smith, thank you very much for taking part and it’s good to hear the optimism that we may have a solution to this by May.

Now it’s always useful to see how other countries are tackling these problems. Over the past few years In Touch has looked at telephone voting systems in New Zealand, online voting systems in other parts of Europe but tonight, of all nights, we thought it would be good to know how visually impaired people are voting in the United States.

So, I asked Chris Danielsen of the National Federation of the Blind in the US, just how big an issue is this for them.

Danielsen

Well, it’s a huge issue Peter. I believe it was in 2002 there was a law passed in the United States called The Help America Vote Act and that law said, for the first time, blind people should have the right to vote privately and independently. And the way that it implemented that was to say that every polling place in the United States for federal elections had to have at least one accessible voting machine. This would be a voting machine that has audio output and screen magnification and other features to allow blind people and people with other disabilities to vote privately and independently.

White

So, does that mean therefore that, for example, if you’ve got audio that you go into the polling booth and you can hear the order of the candidates on your card, just how does that work?

Danielsen

Yes, so typically you have a set of headphones and you also, typically, have a tactile keypad. The audio prompts which are, typically, synthesised speech, will walk you through the ballot, it’ll walk you through each contest, you can scroll down and hear the name of each candidate and then you can hit a select button to select the one you want. You go through the entire ballot this way, you then have an opportunity to review your entire ballot, where the machine reads all your choices back to you. Then what happens is the machine prints out your ballot.

White

So, how will most visually impaired people be voting in your current election?

Danielsen

This is an unusual election, obviously, because of the Covid-19 pandemic and so like other voters a lot of people will have voted in advance and they will have voted by mail. Now that raises a different issue which is whether mail ballots are accessible. Most states set up early voting centres, so you can go before election day and those are also required to have the accessible machines. And then some of us will have gone to vote on election day, just like we normally do.

White

Just setting covid aside for a minute, is this thought now to be the perfect solution or does more need to be done?

Danielsen

It’s not a perfect solution, simply because all states don’t have it in place yet, even though they should.

White

If you do have a problem with these machines, can you normally get help at the polling station?

Danielsen

The poll workers are supposed to know how to operate the machines, that is another problem blind people sometimes experience, sometimes they don’t, sometimes a blind person shows up at the polling place and the machine isn’t even set up – that’s one of the reasons we have our election day hotline. I have sometimes had to talk with a poll worker and explain to them how their particular machine works.

White

Chris Danielsen, telling us how the Americans or some of them, anyway, are doing it, some interesting parallels with us though.

I must just ask Holly, had this been brought in when you were in the States voting Holly?

Mathis

I haven’t voted in person in the US since 2002, so I don’t remember it being offered to me then.

White

So, you just missed it by the sound of it. How does it sound as a solution to you?

Mathis

I think that’s really great. I really like the idea. Like I say I am able to see the ballot myself but even so I do feel more confident and more reassured.

White

And you wouldn’t have to find the black boxes because it prints your vote by the sound of it.

Mathis

Yeah.

White

Eleanor, it sill feels as if we haven’t found a reliable modern solution to this. Isn’t some form of electronic, even online voting, because the American system’s not online but isn’t some online voting the ultimate answer?

Southwood

For lots of people electronic voting is the thing that would feel ideal. The focus is on getting something in today that we can absolutely build on and I would hope we’d continue to look at the most modern options available in the future.

White

Well, we will, of course, continue to keep a very close eye on this. Our thanks to all our guests – Anna Rigby, Holly Mathis, RNIB Chair Eleanor Southwood and Cabinet Office Minister Chloe Smith.

Your comments and experiences, as always welcome and just a couple of heads up for next week – some news has reached us of the planned closure of the RNIB’s large print library in Peterborough, it will cease operating in January. We’ll have more on this next week. So, if you use it and you’ve got questions you’d like us to put do let us know. And there’s what sounds like a fascinating television programme, broadcast tomorrow night on BBC 4 at 9.00 pm, it’s called the Disordered Eye where filmmaker Richard Butchins challenges the importance of good vision in making great art. We’re going to be talking to him next week. And of course, the programme continues to be available after the broadcast on the BBC iPlayer.

You can email [email protected] or go to our website at bbc.co.uk/intouch. From me, Peter White, producer Mike Young and studio managers John Cole and Sharon Hughes. Goodbye.