Ottawa Elections officer Amy Desjardins demonstrates one of the new Voter Assist Terminals.
The City of Ottawa introduced new technology at its polling stations during this week’s municipal election to make voting easier and more private for those with special needs.
Voter Assist Terminals (VAT) were made available to the public at the advanced polls on Oct. 2 and Oct. 14 in at least one voting location in each ward, says Tyler Cox, the Ottawa Elections Office project co-ordinator in charge of the accessibility project.
The machines allow voters to mark their ballots independently when, in the past, they may have needed an Elections Office worker to mark their ballots for them, he explains.
The terminal physically marks the ballots, but does not record or store the votes in the machine itself.
“The city has, for a number of elections, been committed to providing an accessible election,” Cox says, adding that recent changes to the provincial Municipal Elections Act required cities to have more accessible polls.
On election day, however, the machines were only to be made available for voters living in long-term care and seniors residences.
Jean-Denis Hurtubise, the Elections Office’s senior officer, said they rented 62 machines for this election, at a cost of $100,000.
“It’s a matter of resources and the necessary work to prepare (the machines). We were limited in that to a certain point,” he says.
Renting enough machines for the hundreds of voting locations open on election day was not feasible this time, Hurtubise says.
The Ottawa Elections Office wanted to allow voters here to test them out, then put them in the locations where they were needed most on election day, says Cox.
The VATs were chosen because they are compatible with the ballots used in the election, she says. Both are made by the same company, Elections Systems and Software.
This election was the first run for the terminals in Ottawa, adds Cox, but the Elections Office researched their use in other jurisdictions.
Each machine includes a high-contrast touch screen that lets voters zoom in to better see the names of candidates, large buttons with Braille and an audio device with headphones for voters with impaired vision. The VAT also offers a sip/puff device and rocker paddle for voters with limited mobility or difficulty with motor function.
Leona Emberson, a specialist in independent living skills for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, says she tested a VAT in August.
Emberson says she tested the magnification and voice features of the machine, which fit on a table. The magnification feature was good, she says, but didn’t make the type large enough for her.
The voice feature, which reads instructions and lists of candidates to the voter through a pair of headphones, made it easy for her to find the correct button and mark the correct vote, she says. It was simpler than using tactile templates and memorizing lists read by assistants at the polling stations like she has used in previous elections.
Emberson says she liked how the voice feature confirmed her selections at the end.