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Jeff Labine
Voting in municipal elections in Thunder Bay is about to get easier for residents with disabilities says the city.
The city has leased 30 tabulation machines from Dominion voters to assist voters with disabilities and allow them more independence for the 2010 municipal election.
The new tabulators offer audio directions, a breathing apparatus for quadriplegics, colour coded right and left stepping pads and a voting pad with raised shapes as buttons so those voters who traditioanlly relied on an assistant can now vote in privacy.
However, residents with both vision and auditory impairment will still need a companion to assist them.
All the features connect to a scanner that reads and counts the ballot while creating a PDF file for auditing purposes. Most residents will use a pen and paper to fill out their ballot with the scanner replacing the hand counters.
"This system over the old one gives greater ease," City Clerk John Hannam said. "I sat you down with a stack of ballots and your colleague down with a stack of ballots, you’d both come up with a different number. People make mistakes. Counting ballots isn’t a simple task."
Hannam said the scanner provides more accuracy compared to people counting ballots. The cost for all the supplies and support for 30 machines came to less than $80,000 and placed at certain locations during the election. City administration will give the locations of the machines at a later date, he said.
The last municipal election, held in 2006, had one of the lowest voter turnouts at about 30 per cent. Hannam said he hoped the new system would increase voter turn out.
"The experience in other municipalities that have used this equipment in past elections is that the turn out is still pretty low," he said. "This is our initial attempt to expose the community to this and encourage them to come out and vote."
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