Brewer man rallies for disabled voting Veteran wants new funds to help blind

BREWER – A local man who is losing his eyesight used his visit to the polls Tuesday to call attention to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, signed last week by President Bush.

A local historian, former photographer and a Vietnam War veteran, Brewer resident Brian Higgins said Wednesday that one of his aims is to ensure that his state and community get their fair share of the bill’s proceeds.

The national voting rights bill is expected to benefit millions of voters and potential voters with disabilities. Among other improvements, the bill earmarks $100 million nationwide for ensuring polling place access.

The week-old federal law could add a technological component to voting rules the state already has on the books. Provisions now in place are the results of 1993 legislation developed by participants in a Bangor High School senior seminar on government economics and their instructors, James Smith and John Purton.

State election rules require municipal clerks to set aside at least one voting booth for the visually impaired. That booth must have voting instructions and a specimen ballot in large print, a magnifying device and adjustable lighting. Large-print ballots can be produced locally on copy machines.

Voters also can receive assistance with reading and marking ballots, either from a voting aide available at the polls or from a person of the voter’s choice, such as a relative or friend. While the voting aide does not need to be of voting age, the aide may not be an employer of the voter or affiliated with a union to which the voter belongs.

While Higgins agrees that magnifiers and adjustable lighting are useful with some types of visual impairment, particularly those resulting from the normal aging process, he said neither accommodation was much help for his particular impairment, retinitis pigmentosa.

And while a closed-circuit television system also has been offered at his local polling place, Higgins noted it was set up in a spot that did not offer the privacy needed to cast a confidential ballot.

The $100 million in federal funding that will become available could help Maine acquire some of the latest voting technology, such as voting machines equipped with touch screens and audio assistance, Higgins said.

Other key provisions in the bill include: requiring at least one voting machine accessible to people with disabilities at each polling place by 2006; providing funds to replace punch-card and lever-style voting machines with more user-friendly ones; funding research for new voting technologies; and contributing to states’ efforts to help individuals register to vote, access polling places and cast ballots.