Im tom hick, vice chair of the elections assistance commission, and on the panel you will see two people, and the third is coming, and the fourth is also coming. So, im going to introduce the folks who are here [ laughter ] so, to my left, virginia atkinson is the senior accessibility and accessible inclusion specialist at the National Foundation for electoral systems, and she has more than a decade of experience work on disability rights and governance issues. And she provides Technical Assistance and training to Civil Society, organization and election management bodies. She is also the lead author of the manual equal access, how the include persons with disabilities in elections and political processes. On my right, stafford ward. He is secretary of the board of the oversees Vote Foundation as well as the technology in voting systems adviser. The foundation provides u. S. Citizens with the Voting Services and election data central to the commissions on this side, over here. Yep. In elections, we just roll with it. So, central to that mission is the foundations work to provide online tools to assist the americans living anywhere in the world. Including those living abroad and serving in the military to register to vote and request their absentee ballots. Stafford plays a lead role in shaping the strategies of the Technology Initiatives and works to ensure that the voters have easy access to information they need to participate in the democracy from all corners of the world. Michelle bishop is the Voting Rights specialist with the National DisabilityRights Network and a position she has held for nearly five years. Michelle provides training and Technical Assistance providing Voting Rights and accessible for voters with disabilities and she also coordinates the working group and manages their list serve. Last but not least and i will int introduce him, because he is on the way is cameron siznak and he is the director of the office of general elections in Fairfax County, the large nest virginia, which is the states most populous u county. And he oversees the staff to coordinate the voting elections and initiatives pfor the county and 3 million voters and during his time as commissioner, he has expanded the countys Language Access and successful story that he has shared with us last summer at our language summit here in d. C. And we look forward to his continued conversation today when he arrives. So with that, i want to start with michelle to talk about disability access. Absolutely. Am i good . Okay. Hi. Im Michelle Bishop and i like to make an entrance and so i am always fashionably late, but i would like to thank cameron for being later than i am today. Come on up. [ laughter ] something that i will be basically never living down from mr. Hicks, so thank you for having me this afternoon first and foremost, and im happy to be here to talk about disability voter access and what we are looking towards in the 2018 election cycle and with the disability Rights Network, we are a National Network of disability rights organizations, so there is an organization of ours in every state, district, and territory in the united states. Wherever you r we are there and we are mandated by haba to access voting for people with disabilities. And now that is out of the way, i want to get to what you have come here to hear. And to sum it up for access to voting for people with disab disabilities is the report coming out of the government Disabilities Office and they have survey ed the polling plac access in 2000, and 2008 and 2016 and that has been the best benchmark has to where we are at, and this is the most recent report of 2016 is really telling, because what we have found is that the polling place, itself, that have to travel from the parking all of the way up to the voting booth has consistently improved in terms of the accessibility. The first time it was studied in 2000, only 16 , and less than 0 of the polling places were full less than 20 of the opolling places were accessible. And in 2008, 30 and then 2016, 40 , and that is sounding bad because less than half is acc s accessible, but the sad thing is that when we saw that, i was excited. That is telling you where our expectations were right now, because it is less than half, but at least the number is going in the right direction and i will take that win for right now. I will say that the although progress has been slow for many reasons. The least of which is lack of funding. The progress has been slow, and we are moving in the right direction and i think that the nu number that is most telling is that since 2000, the gao is looking at the accessibility of the the voting booth itself. And in 2008 they found that 46 of them were not fully accessible. 46 of voting stations themselves had some type of the impidme mepediment for people w disabilities n. 2016, the number went up to 65 in some way inaccessible so we are going to the wrong direction in how we are actually casting the ballot. That means they were less likely to be wheelchair accessible, and less like hly to be set up to ensure voter privacy and less likely to have earphones for those who cannot read the ballot or a page turning, and less likely to be powered on. We are setting up Voting Machines that we are not bothering to switch on. And there are two i think that in my mind are main reasons for, that and what changed between 2008 and 2016 . I will say that the first thing that we have talked a lot about today is the funding issue, and when hava passed the federal government was willing to put the money into the states to get the equipment that we need to make it happen, and that money has not been replaced in. In states and local jurisdictions that desperately need the funding to be able to maintain or update that equipment. And it is sorely needed to be updated, because the machines that we are using are invented before ipads and iphones, so they themselves are severely out of date, but the funding is not are there to make the changes so we are working with equipment that is less than ideal. Another point that is a focal point today is the security issue. I think that it is important, and i think that it is important for elections to be secure and accurate and we all know that, but the main solution for the security issue is returning to the hand marked paper ballot. This has been the primary solution that has been offer ed for all of our Cyber Security concerns which means that we went back to polling places where mostly setting up folding tables with the stack of ballot s and pen. And we have one piece of accessible equipment and you cant do that and we are not even able to, because for some reason when we talk about voting security, we get comfortable with the segregation. And to look at this paperback, and anyone else can go to use a special machine over here in the corner that is [ inaudible ] can and how we are casting the ballot to start to see the inequality. There is one that you can see that separate is not equal. And so we are seeing the decline in the accessibility of the voting booth itself and we will continue to see that until we start to proposing Real Solutions that are multi acce accessible and until we are willing to fund them with the funding that we need to make it possible. Because that technology is available, and in 16 year, we are still having the same argument. The technology exists today, but we need to learn how the leverage it in a way that is efficient and present to te elections authorities. So there are real solution brishgs not tasolutions, but we are not talking about them, and also in 2018, we are changing the way we vote. All of the sudden, people are registering to vote online or maybe a mail ballot. Voters expect those options, and it is easier for the Elections Officials to manage, and the voters to manage, but all of the oopgss have to be accessible, and they are to varying degrees, and like everything else, everybody does it differently, a and the extent to which we are talking about disabilities throughout that process to make sure it is accessible is going to determine how accessible the systems are. Are we talking to people with disabilities when we roll it out or krcreating new voting equipmt to have people with disabilities not being asked what they think about it. And are we implementing it, and not asking them if it is going to be working in the first place. And so all of those solutions are simple because we have to be collaborating and working together. We have talked a lot today about the expectations of the elections authorities and now it is not enough to been a expert in elections, but you vu to be an i. T. Expert, and now Cyber Security and no blockchain came up, because nobody defined it, right . Half of the people in the room dont know what a blockchain is and you have to be an expert in all of these things, and that is unrealistic and unfair, and the good news is that it is also that you dont have to be an expert in those things, but you need to know who to talk to. And there are disability rights org asianizations in every state and territory who are mandated to work on this whether we are talking to them or not, and we might as well be working together, and we can solve the issues, but that is a lot of what we will be working on. And one question later son how can groups like yours work with the Election Officials to move the ball forward and with that, cameron, we are going to be going to you, and the premise is that we are giving fiveminute presentation, and then we will be, i will be asking questions. Consider iing the target audience i will try to limit my five minutes, and so i have to thank you for allow knowing be the award winner for the fashionably late entry. Being the moderator is great, and i will tell you that literally being trapped on the on ramp on i6666, and if you are visiting d. C. In the future, avoid 66, because if you are talking about the lines for elections weshg can build some fa fantastic lines off there. In terms of the local administration, because i could not agree more with you in looking holistically in the approach. Here in virginia, one of the things that we had a fantastic look at election where is we had to have recount, and you could see these things not in the the simulated environment, or the test environment, but the real world, and did the person fill out the bubble right. For those who have done the recounts in the election, and looked at all of the ballots, you know that it is not as simple as, you know, filling that bubble and in that direction they they follow. So, you know, i get to think that, you know, what happens when somebody who may not be able to hold a pen correctly, and what happens for the person who does not have the ability to actually understand fill in the bubble, what options do they have, and are they that willing to go over to ask for the one machine that is there. A few years back u i was offended when i walked into the polling places, and my teams had put up a handicapped sign on the ada device and started to explain to them it is not for somebody who is physically disabled necessarily, but it is for somebody who might have a visual disability or for somebody who might have a cognitive disability to allow them to interact and that is the approach that we try to take here in Fairfax County is that it is something that the election officers understand that it is not necessarily somebody rolling nup a wheelchair or might be using a cane. So getting that idea into the 5,000 election officers heads at the same time they do in fact need to do more than pull it out of the bag, and turn it on, and they need to understand that it needs to have all of the accessories able and ready to go so that every voter will have the ability to vote. And so one of the things that i want to look towards is leveling the voting experience for everybody. So as the new equipment is coming out and more reminiscent of the style that is going to prevent overvoting, and voters with a language barrier will have the opportunity no matter the language. And so getting and using those the ada devices as actual full polling devices for everybody so that regardless of what the voters disabilities or limitations may be, they are voting the same way and the same method as every voter who cast a ballot and ultimately at the end of the day, winds oup with the same type of ballot so we are not debating back and forth and having a threejudge panel to decide if an extra line that somebody drew through the name constitutes a i wanted that voter or i wanted that candidate or not. So, i think that those are the sort of the paths that we can go down towards, and those are decisions that we have to make as administrators, and i have to be the one pounding the drum at the General Assembly to say, we need more money, otherwise, we are going to be seeing situations like this, and if we dont have the tools and resources for voters, we will continue to have essentially what amounts to have contested election, because we will have ink all over the paper ballot, and so i think that minimizing that and getting those resources are one of the things that i look at locally especially as just a little bit ago of our General Assembly here. Thank you for invite knowing the panel and a specific acknowledgment to my wife, happy anniversary. I have a slightly different take on the disability, and different from what the other panelists have said today. The goals for my presentation today is a different of the narrative of the absentee voting and overseas voting. And we have had ballot issues that were prior to the uniform and overseas voting and absentee voting since 1996 where the ballots could be reached to the voters oversees and received on time, and the citizens had the ability to vote overseas, and the whole foundation sees itself as a Inflection Point of the policy that we feel for the o r overseas voters with disabilities. And one is that people who live overseas 20plus years have to file for the absentee ballots every year, and they have to prove their citizenship, and those who were born overseas may not have the ability to vote oversea, and the voter turnout rate is 4 , and i think that i am looking at my colleague here are from the report of congress to 2016, it is a 4 rate, and as have been mentioned, the u. S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments where it was, which was taking a ruling on the how the National Voter registration act, and in that case, there is a example of the military voter who served 15 years in iraq and four years in afghanistan, and thrown off of the rolls, because he did not vote in consecutive election cycles and that is the reason that he was taken off tof the rolls. But this is part of the narrative that is changing, and we are focused on that at the foundation. So i want to get to the three points that i wanted to identify in my remarks here. One is that i wanted to explain who are the u. S. Voting foundation, and to address more of the accessibility and technology that we are utilizing and three to the talk about the participation with the Election Officials throughout the country. I noticed that tom mentioned the overseas voting foundation, but we are no longer known as that. We were own as the overseas voting foundation, which is establi established by the ceo at the time who she saw a need for having greater access for those overseas con ssistent with the ucava act, and we are not an advocacy group. We are Nonpartisan Group to serve those living abroad to have access to vote. In 2004, we were the first to auto mate the first writein absentee balloting, and section 203 of the act, and we were there to make sure that elements were in place so that u. S. Citizens living overseas, no matter where they lived had access to the ballot. Part of this vision is that every citizen is a voter and what that means is that basically ensuring that every citizen has access to Voter Registration with the democracy and citizen life as voting for a central actionaction. So the foundation makes the v s process easier for overseas voters as those in country. My next point of the disability is that some of the reforms we have seen of the act that came with the military and the overseas Voter Empowerment act of 2009. That helped to facilitate and expand the voters rights overseas for the u. S. Citizen, and that has enabled us at the foundation to leverage that act to increase accessibility for those u. S. Citizens living overseas. And again, this is part of the narrative that we are changing to discard the old notions of what it meant to vote overseas to what it is now in terms of how we are using the specific knowledge to access those voters overseas. We are using the industry standards, you know, in terms of the technology, and the excel, and the python and some of the other programming language that is out there, and the other Assistive Technology in the backend databases so that it is access only the local and state and thirdparty organizations. And so part of that harnessing is to host Web Solutions for the states. And we have Election Officials data that we have collected from all of the officials across the country, and the data has an application interface which is going to help push the information that we collect to the users and licensees so they can best use the information at their ledger. So it is because we are a Civic Technology organization, we are very, very serious about providing high quality curated data ta. And we are very serious about the privacy, and also as the previous panelist said, about security. And that is something that doug mentioned in the top of the remarks earlier, but that is leading into t