Witnesses:

Jim Dickson, Vice President, National Organization on Disability; Rear Adm. Stephen Yusem, Ret. President, Reserve Officers Association of the United States

Mr. Philip Zelikow: The first witness on this panel is Jim Dickson. Jim Dickson is the vice president of the National Organization on Disability and the director of the Vote 2000 Campaign, a campaign that was designed specifically to try and increase the voter participation of disabled people in the 2000 election. He has been involved in the issues of disabled people in voting for a long time on a national level. We are grateful that you could join us today, Mr. Dickson.

Mr. Jim Dickson: Thank you very much. Before I address the voting issues, I want to thank President Ford for his early support of depicting President Roosevelt in his wheelchair. I was privileged to lead that campaign. Sir, your early call for showing the president as he was was invaluable. The disability community in America will never forget your support there. Thank you.

I will address the disability piece, but to segue from what we just discussed, I would like the record to show that the Voter News Service refused to identify people with disabilities in their exit polls. We negotiated with them for over a year. They basically said to us: "Sue us. We dare you. We are the networks. Who are you?"

Our coalition resulted in an increase in voters with disabilities to 2.3 million over 1996. There were many technical things wrong with the Voter News Service�s exit polls, but the fact that they didn�t identify our large turnout and our particular cut on the election had a lot to do with their error. As a result of the work of thousands and thousands of grassroots advocates across the nation, we made huge strides. We increased our voter turnout by 10%, from 31% of us to 41% of us voting. President Ford, in your opening remarks you lamented low voter turnout. People with disabilities are the largest single identifiable group of people who are not voting. That is because we cannot get into the polling place. That is because we do not have a secret ballot, and that is because we are not registered, and the NVRA is not being enforced.

We do not precisely know how many polling places are inaccessible. I am certain that it is at least 25%. One out of four polling places in the United States of America, President Roosevelt could not enter today, last November, or next November. In the state of Arkansas, there was a court-ordered inspection of every single polling place in the state. Forty percent were not wheelchair accessible. The total number of disabled Americans who did not vote in the last election, just voting age citizens, was 21 million. I am blind. I have never cast a secret ballot. Many Americans, after Florida, wondered was there vote cast the way they directed. I have wondered that after every single time I have voted and so have more than 10 million Americans who cannot see well enough to read the ballot. When in one election, my wife went into the polling place with me; she was marking the ballot. She said, "Jim, I know you love me. I know you trust me because you think you are marking this ballot for that idiot." I hasten to add that we were not voting for any of the distinguished elected or former-elected members on the Commission.

Twice in my personal experience I have had poll workers, in spite of the law-the law says I can choose who helps me-twice I have had poll workers insist that they do it. Twice I have had poll workers say things to me in the tone of voice: "You want to vote for whom?" And after every election we get scores and hundreds of similar complaints. Any new federal legislation must have a mandate that says all polling places will be physically accessible and in every polling place there will be at least one device that would allow myself and millions of other Americans to cast a secret and verifiable ballot. This must be a mandate. Just tying it to the money will not work. There is a 17-year-old law that says polling places should be accessible. The ADA is ten years old. There have never been national standards defining what is an accessible polling place.

I can get up in the morning with my own alarm clock and walk to the bus stop and have the bus announce to me what bus I am getting on. I can go to my office and read Braille on the elevator so that I get off at the right floor. I can turn my computer on myself, download my email, and go to work, all by myself. I cannot go into the voting booth and vote alone. That is wrong, and that is hurtful to our democracy. It accounts for lots and lots of people who choose not to go because they do not want to undergo the humiliation of saying to somebody, "I can�t read this." I have no idea where I am on my time.

Mr. Zelikow: You are out of time, but we should happily give you another minute or a little more time to close.

Mr. Dickson: On the question of voter registration, I was one of the advocates who conceived of and part of the leadership team that put the coalition together to pass the law. Section 7 of the law requires that people with disabilities be offered the chance to vote from the disability service agencies. The idea was that we do not drive; we are not going to go to the DMV. There are still over 15 million Americans who have never been offered the chance to register to vote by the disability service agencies. The National Organization on Disability did a poll in May 2000 with the Lou Harris Company. Over 40% of agencies with disabilities had not asked one client to register to vote. The Justice Department needs to start enforcing that law. I am honored that I had the opportunity to speak to you. I am ready to answer any questions. Thank you.

Mr. Zelikow: Thank you, Mr. Dickson. Even though you could not see the time, your consciousness of time was exemplary. Our next witness is Rear Admiral Stephen Yusem. Rear Admiral Yusem is the national president of the Reserve Officers of the United States. He has served as the national vice president of the Navy section. In civilian life he has been a lawyer, but he is wearing his whites today. I should add that Admiral Yusem has developed some particular expertise about the problems of military and overseas voting; no one can appreciate the difficulty of remote military voting than a sailor at sea. So Admiral Yusem, it is appropriate that you are here today.

Rear Admiral Stephen Yusem: Thank you very much, sir, President Ford, and distinguished members of the Commission. Next year will be the 80th anniversary of my organization-the 78,000 member, congressionally-chartered Reserve Officers Association-and the fiftieth anniversary of President Harry Truman�s letter to the House Administration Committee, the opening paragraph of which fifty years ago read as follows: "The men and women who are serving their country and, in many cases, risking their lives deserve above all others the exercise in the right to vote. At a time when these young people are defending our country and its free institutions, the least we, at home, can do is to make sure that they are able to enjoin the rights that they are being asked to fight to preserve." The closing paragraph of that same letter states this: "Unless early action is taken, hundreds of thousands of service men and women will be deprived of their constitutional right to vote."

Two weeks ago, The Military Times reported, in reference to the November 2000 election, 150,000 military personnel thwarted the attempt to vote. These 150,000 voters tried to vote but were disenfranchised by technically complex and convoluted state and local laws. Another 675,000 military voters did cast absentee ballots, as President Truman reminded Congress almost a century ago; however, there are barriers in the way. Those are President Truman�s words, and I would like to, fifty years later, enumerate some of those barriers that are as large today as they were then.

First, the inadequate ballot transmission time. The absentee ballot process takes, as you can imagine, at least three steps. First, it has to be transmitted from the voter to the election official; that takes a long time when you are sitting in a foxhole out in Kosovo somewhere. Then the unmarked ballot has to be transmitted back from the election official to the military man out in the field somewhere; he could be in a submarine under sea for ninety straight days. Then it has to be marked and sent back to the election official again. There are three steps, and that is for each of the primary election, the general election, the run-off election, and the special election. Four elections in one year, possibly twelve steps. It is not going to happen.

The solutions to that are several. First of all, it is to extend the time within which military voters have a right to cast their ballot, 45 days at least. More to the age that we are now living in this century, information technology is in place now to fix this problem, authorized electronic transmission of absentee ballots. Secure voting systems are available to be done now.

The second barrier is confusing state requirements to submit a separate ballot request for each of the elections. Many states have a system where you have to submit separate requests for each election. Most military voters think that when they submit their request for the primary, the general and the other elections will automatically come to them. In some states that happens, and in some states that does not happen. The solution is to require the states to accept one federal postcard application the-the acronym is FPCA-for all elections during a single year. Submit that one postcard for the one election year, and you are in for receiving your absentee ballots for that year automatically.

The next barrier is as true now as it was back in Harry Truman�s day. Recently separated military voters-20,000 come out of the service every month-are often unable to register because they are discharged within the time limit that you must register. If you are discharged less than 35 or less than 40 days before the election, it is too late. You cannot send in the FPCA because you are not in the military anymore. So, it is a Catch-22. These recently separated folks are likewise disenfranchised.

Then there is the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot-WAB-that is legal for general elections but not legal for primaries and specials and runoffs. That creates a problem. These are ballots that enable remotely stationed people to write in the candidates name because they have to receive their ballot before the printed ballots are even off the printing press. They are that far away and difficult to get to, for example, such as a submarine force or remotely stationed individuals: I am ticking off just a few. I will conclude with this one.

There is also no provision for any emergency voting procedure. This is an age of sequential military crises: the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East, take your pick. There are 100,000 reservists on active duty, right this minute who had no clue they were going to be on active duty six, eight, ten, or twelve months ago. Some process needs to be instituted to give appropriate emergency authority to election officials to serve those people.

Concluding, either I am out of synch or I am surprised that no one has mentioned, the whole course of the day, the bill before Congress now, the HR 1377, the bipartisan Military Overseas Voters Empowerment Act, which does guarantee residency, which addresses the problem of recently separated military, provides for electronic voting demonstration project to be tried out in November 2002. The project would be followed by a report to Congress in 2003 so that maybe something could be in place by 2004. It would solve all kinds of problems, not only for my group, but for my colleagues� group as well.

I conclude by saying that back when our association was founded in 1919, women were fighting for their right to vote. Congress fixed that; women got the right to vote. In the 1960s, the minority folks and the poor were fighting the poll tax. Congress fixed that-no poll tax-they have their right to vote. Now is the time for our military people, whose fundamental right to vote is in jeopardy, to be protected as well. As President Truman admonished, it is time to make sure that those who serve our nation do not, because of that very service, lose their fundamental right to vote. I thank you very much for your time and attention.

Dr. Diane Ravitch: Mr. Dickson, I am wondering whether the needs of the diverse disability community that you represent might be satisfied by access to the kind of mail ballot that is used in Oregon.

Mr. Dickson: That is a controversial issue among people with disabilities. There clearly are some people for whom transportation is a major problem, and they would benefit by that. California does have, I believe, the most efficient way to authorize absentee ballots; it might be looked at for the military. However, for those of us who can�t see the ballot, that just removes the lack of secrecy from the polling place to our home, so it is not a fix. I would end by saying that I wonder how the African-American community would respond if they were told that they should vote by absentee and not go to the polling place.

Congressman Robert Michel: Admiral, I got my start in politics in the seventh grade handing out sunflowers for Ralph Lamden. By the time I came of age to fight for my country, I was in Normandy when I was 19. The first election that I would be able to vote [in was] in 1944. So, my folks told me how I could get, through v-mail, an absentee ballot, which I did and in plenty of time even though it was not the best conditions, but it did not get up. In the meantime we had the Battle of the Bulge pushed back and all the rest. So, I finally got my ballot in January of 1945. I voted anyway even though I was on the short side. But I got to thinking about that during the course of these hearings. And even when I was in the Congress and responsible for amending the law, to some degree, we obviously didn�t do enough. We didn�t do a good enough job. The statistics that you give us today and the testimony might very well serve as the basis for prodding our contemporaries in the Congress to do a better job on making it feasible for our military to vote. I think we are so far along technologically and transportation-wise and communication-wise-except or maybe that situation in a sub submerged for 90 days, I am not sure how we treat that-but we ought to do better. I think your testimony will prompt us to talk to Congress. Thank you.

Admiral Yusem: I must admit, I appreciate hearing that from a true military patriot. I know you enlisted in 1942. You have a bronze star, a purple heart, four battle stars, and you are one of our role models, sir. We appreciate your being on this Commission.

Ms. Colleen McAndrews: Mr. Dickson, I am curious if you could describe to us what the machine would look like for a visually impaired person to use in a polling place. Do they exist? Have they been created? Are they under manufacture? What would the individual cost per device be considering there are 192,000 polling places in the country? Could we get some idea of what the gross cost would be?

Mr. Dickson: Yes, they exist. Yes, they have been used in number of elections. They are relatively new. Simply put, it works with the DRE, or the so-called touch screen. It simply is a voice output so I hear the ballot. They could be operated either with a telephone keypad similar to when you call to transfer money to your bank or try to reach the phone company. You hear the computer say, "Push one for George Washington. Push two for Abraham Lincoln. Push three for Teddy Roosevelt." And then you get a verbal report back, "You have selected Teddy Roosevelt."

The costs are currently all over the lot. The sort of advertised costs run from a low of $3,000 to a high of $6,000 per unit. I think it is an important reason to have state standards because it will force economy of scale, not just for the disabled, but also for the population as a whole. The city of Houston is about to select one of these machines. They have decided to make all of the machines accessible because when you do it on that scale, the cost is minimal. We are currently suing the city of Philadelphia who chose to spend $19 million on inaccessible touch screens in spite of the fact that the runner-up bid offered to provide the accommodation at no additional cost. The point I am making is that while the costs are advertised as high, the practical evidence we have is that this cost is normal. I would end by saying, what price is democracy? It ought to be priceless. This is not a place where we should be saying, what is the cheapest system? We wouldn�t send our military forces overseas with the cheapest rifle or the cheapest aircraft carrier.

Mr. Christopher Edley: Mr. Dickson, I am struck by your very valid point that you make that, in terms of access, we have had laws on the books for quite a while, a couple of laws, as well as requirements under Motor-Voter. So, in your judgment if Congress writes yet another law saying, �Here is what states must do as a mandate,� or alternatively says, �Here is what states must do in order to get some federal money,� what kind of mechanism do you think would be effective at seeing to it that, this time around, the mandate would actually be implemented?

Mr. Dickson: It must be a private right of action attached to that. Just as we have seen problems when there has been fraud, and I don�t believe there has been much of it, but for attorneys, generals, and other officials it is a generally low priority. We have had problems with inadequate resources going into the Justice Department to implement Motor-Voter. I think we need to rely on the private market; that means allowing individuals the private right to sue if an election official is saying one thing but doing another.

Mr. William Coleman, Jr.: Mr. Dickson, do you have a draft of a statute, which would cover exactly what you would ask directly?

Mr. Dickson: Yes, attached to my testimony. The state of Texas two and a half years ago passed legislation that, on balance, is very, very good. Governor Bush, then, signed it into law. It basically says that if you are going to buy a new system, it must be accessible. And it sets up standards for access, and the state has certified a number of machines. That piece of Texas legislation would be a very good model with the one proviso that, unfortunately, the Texas law says that if a county chooses to make just one polling place accessible in that county, that is okay. So, a county that might be, in Texas, 80 miles in diameter can put one polling place, have it accessible and the rest be not. And with the exception with that caveat, the Texas model is an excellent piece of legislation.

Mr. Coleman: And Admiral, has your group drawn a statute, or bill rather, that would cover everything that you said?

Admiral Yusem: Sir, we support 1377. The House bill looks good to us. It could use a little tweaking, but it is a giant step forward. We are behind 1377 that is on the books right now. In fact, there are six of them right now before the House and the Senate. The Senate version, I think, is S.731, very close to 1377 and several others. We think 1377 has it right.

Mr. Coleman: I followed your testimony. The only problem I have is with the complaint you made that when a person in the military would get a document and he would vote and not realize he would have to get another for the general, doesn�t the first document say that? I can�t imagine people in the military don�t read and would not be able to understand what the rules were.

Admiral Yusem: It is interesting you raise that. We are talking about 55 different jurisdictions: the states, plus five of the territories, that have all of these different rules. There are 55 different brochures that go out there. Bear in mind, sir, that a huge majority of the military is voting for their very first time; they are kids, 18, 19, 20 years old. They have never voted before.

Mr. Coleman: That is to say that the people who are manning the submarines and otherwise are not well trained.

Admiral Yusem: I hear what you are saying. Steering a $2 billion submarine is a lot more fun than reading through a ninety-page brochure on how to vote. Be that as it may, historically and statistically, that has been a problem. It does not have to be a problem, so it may as well be fixed. It fixes so easily, it is not worth worrying about what the cause of the problem is. All you have to do is send in a postcard application, and that ought to count for all of the elections that year, no reason not to. In some states it does right now.

Mr. Zelikow: And we go to President Ford to close this panel.

President Ford: Admiral, I was surprised during your testimony, discussing what had been done to get the military to vote, you didn�t mention that during the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, that Congress and the American people approved the right of 18-year-olds to vote. The old argument being that during the war that if we are old enough to fight, we are old enough to vote. Now, the Congress passed the necessary constitutional amendment sometime around the 1960s, and then it was approved by the necessary states. But what is disappointing, [is] that after that constitutional amendment was approved in subsequent elections, the participation of 18 to 21-year-olds has been lousy. They have been one of the poorest age groups in our whole spectrum as far as participation in the right to vote. Those of us, I am sure Bob Michel is one, who fought to get that constitutional amendment approved, have been very disappointed in the participation of young people in our election process.

Admiral Yusem: I am glad you raised that, Mr. President. That is true for the general population. From a military perspective participation is much, much higher than the general population. It is up to 20% higher. In the 2000 election 1,046,000 out of 1,355,000 members voted, a tremendous percentage. Of that, 10% were unable to vote; that is, the 150,000 that tried and couldn�t and were frustrated. Forty-eight percent voted by absentee ballot, and some of them were discounted for reasons we have discussed. And 15% voted in person. So, our percentages were way higher than the general percentage because we are out there defending the right for the population to cast that vote. It means more to us.

Mr. Zelikow: Thank you, Admiral Yusem and Mr. Dickson, for joining us here and providing some really invaluable testimony. Contrary to your schedule, the ruthless Commission marches on and will not take a break. It is going directly to the next panel. Occasionally, Commissioners flag and fall by the wayside, as you may have noticed. Sometimes they rouse themselves again and rejoin the fray, but we keep going. The next panel is going to focus on international perspectives. This is a panel that is actually trying to see if America can learn from the election experiences of other countries. We will take just a moment to allow that panel to take their seats.