So here we are, the day before another election and I’m finally writing one of these posts. I usually try to write it before the advance polls, but the advance polls were mostly across Easter weekend and I was gone for Easter. Plus, for this election, there aren’t great accessible voting options for anyone who’s blind. Provincial elections have them, municipal elections have them, but the federal elections can’t get it together, and they barely try.
Here are the list of voting options at the polls:
- you can bring a friend to help you vote or you can get a poll worker to help you vote.
- they do have large print ballots, but no braille.
- there’s the good old braille template, which consists of a piece of metal with braille numbers that must be lined up with the ballot properly. Oo oo, if you show up on election day, which is exactly when most folks who might need a little extra help are least likely to go vote, you can get a braille list of candidates with the numbers that are on the metal template thing. But if you show up in advance, no braille list for you.
- Signature guides, magnifiers with lights and screens to help with glare.
- I swear I saw the same old thing about allowing people to use their phone as an accessibility device, but I can’t find it.
And that’s it, that’s all. It’s not nothing, but notice that a lot of those help out folks with low vision. But all someone with no vision really has is “We’ll help you” or “your friend can help you.” Even if I do the template thing, I still need all the stuff read off, and I need them to line up the ballot properly.
Once again, when we went to vote in advance, we expressed disappointment that the municipalities and the province have got it together, so it’s sad that the federal elections can’t manage it. We got told a bunch of excuses about how they couldn’t possibly manage it for the whole country. Garbage! Purchase the machines, make them available, program them, end of story. They’ve been around for 19 years. Figure it out! I’m sure the company who makes them would be happy to sell them.
So instead, we had to watch as poll workers hoped our friend who drove us to the poll would help us vote, and then when we said no, they agreed to help us. They were reasonably friendly, but it still felt crappy to have to hope it was lined up correctly and have no way of confirming it. So we voted last week, at least we tried to.
For anyone who hasn’t voted yet, please vote tomorrow. If you never got your voter card, you can check where your polling station is by going to Elections Canada and entering your postal code. It does this weird thing where it slaps the map to the polling station over the page so you have to close it to read the name of the station, but it is there. It basically says at this point, the only way to vote is to go to your designated polling station and vote tomorrow.
Good luck with all things voting.