This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
JASON D. KAUNE: Well, hi, everyone. I'm Jason D. Kaune, I'm the chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Election Law, which is a bipartisan and balanced group of election lawyers and practitioners. I'm an election lawyer and have been practicing for 25 years in the field, so I know a lot about election law. But I don't know a lot about disability law and rights, but we've made it a priority of our committee to focus on this issue. Last year, we held a workshop to look at election law administration guidelines that our committee sets out.
When I heard Scott LaBarre speaking, I went immediately to a statement that I know is true: There is the law, and there is the law is administered. So many chairs before me and you'll meet Elizabeth M. Yang who was the original author of the election law guidelines, realized it was important to take election law and translate it into practical guidelines for election administrators. And so, for over 20 years, these guidelines have been developing. They've addressed accessibility, and because of Charlie Brown and others, but we really wanted to take a hard look at accessibility after mail-in voting, and that is where we're going to start. This last election was historic in changing the way we vote.
And again, it's all about implementation. As lawyers, we know there are laws and then unintended consequences, and I was thinking of this in the last election I observed. The city of Los Angeles, which is a pretty big voting body, and it was a close election, it took several weeks to count. And an election that normally saw less than half the voters voting by mail, you had over 70% of the voters voting by mail, and the administrators had to rent an old Fry's electronics store on the outskirts of towns and set up table after table after table. I almost felt like I was in the 1950s.
You had volunteers lined up for as far as you could see. There were computers, but they were just trying to deal with the sheer volume of what they had, which is where election administrators are. Now we must run elections with that new reality and that's a starting point we would like to take. I'm going to turn over to Denise Avant, who is an expert on these topics, and then Elizabeth Yang who I mentioned before has worked with these guidelines. We're going to start with mail voting and there are seven total topics that we're trying to focus on in our guidelines. So, I really thank you for spending time with us today.
DENISE AVANT: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. My name is Denise Avant, and I serve on the American Bar Association's board of governors. Before that, I served as the immediate past chair of the American Bar Association Commission on Disability Rights. And one of our missions is to promote the American Bar Association Commission's commitment to justice and the rule of law for disabled persons, and obviously, voting in all its forms should be accessible to everyone.
One of the topics that I have been working on in my own home state is accessible vote by mail, because many people are voting by mail. Well, how does a blind person or a low-vision person or someone with another type of print disability accomplish that, because the whole process is in print, which is inherently inaccessible.
In my home state and in many other states, we have what we call electronic ballot delivery, so if you can somehow get in touch with your election authority, they will e-mail you a link to your ballot, and you can use your assistive technology. In my case, a screen reader, to mark your ballot. But then the problems begin because one of the rights that I have is to be able to vote privately and independently, and so that means that I've got to print out the ballot. Now I must go get a third party to help me fold it properly, and in Illinois, you sign the envelope, not the ballot. Then you've got to make sure that the printer printed out properly, and then you must either get it to a mailbox or a dropbox. So, it creates a lot of problems for someone wanting to vote privately and independently. So how can we get around that? We feel that -- and we're working on this in Illinois. We want to become the 14th state that has accessible ballot return. That is, where you can return the ballot electronically once you have marked and verified it.
There are some accessibility issues. For example, how can I request an accessible vote by mail ballot? Ideally, we would like to be able to go to our local election website, fill out a form, but the problem is most states want you to sign something and that causes a problem. So how can the states verify that it's really me, Denise Avant? And then once that is over, you also have an issue. Even before that, you have an issue of voter education. We witnessed in the State of Illinois that when the law was passed, allowing for electronic ballot delivery, that the board of elections or in the case of some other states, maybe it's the secretary of state, not only did they not educate print-disabled voters; they didn't even educate their own election authorities to the new statute. They did not have it on their website when you go to visit that the law was in effect and that you could now request a ballot.
These are some of the issues that we're looking at to try to figure out how do we make sure that voters who have print disabilities are educated? How can we have a way to accessibly request the ballot, and then what do we do, as far as signatures whether we are requesting that ballot, or whether we are trying to return it? What are our alternatives? So those are some of the issues that I see when you talk about voting by mail in an accessible way. Any thoughts that you may have, we certainly would appreciate it, and I think I'll turn it over to Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: Good afternoon, everyone, my name is Elizabeth M. Yang. I'm the current policy chair on the American Bar Association standing committee on election law, but I'm also the immediate past staff director of the Standing Committee. I was in that role for a little over 20 years, and I was very privileged to work on the first iteration of the guideline, so just as a matter of background. In 2000, right after Bush v. Gore, the Standing Committee determined it would be very good to set some aspirational guidelines as to how elections will be administered.
Elections in the United States are administered by and large on the state and local level. So, developing a model law or model rule doesn't really work, so what we've tried to do is make aspirational guidelines where we believe we would like to provide a floor, but not a ceiling on how we can improve people's voting rights and access to the ballot box.
What I would love to do is get your feedback and your thoughts on what could work better, so in the past, as Jason mentioned, we were so fortunate to have Charlie Brown as a member of the Standing Committee, and so he was really instrumental in leading a lot of our thought process on the guidelines, and we feel his loss as Scott LaBarre's very deeply, but we're so grateful for this opportunity to speak to you and to find out what you think needs to be in the guidelines.
So, the guidelines are a rather lengthy document. We thought the best way to perhaps distill different talking discussion points would be to sort of narrow it down to seven areas. Denise gave a great background on voting by mail. The other is the notion that an important part of the election process is the educational component, and so we need to be very sure as we go forward that when we're talking about education that it is in accessible formats, so that would include just your right to vote, perhaps what a ballot might look like, what a voting machine might look like.
And then we also believe that we need to prioritize accessibility in all parts of the voting process, from beginning with voter registration to either voting at the polling place, voting by mail, and also issues dealing with cure provisions, where if your voter registration is taken into question, sort of what are the appropriate ways that we can make sure that cure provisions do not disenfranchise certain members of the population, and also, you know, one thing that we talked about is we think there's a need for collaboration between the different communities and election administrators as they begin their roles in drafting laws and even as we do guidelines that there can be advisory boards or members of the community who can be involved in the process.
So, I guess -- I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but I just sort of would like to start with issues that you would like to talk about, because we really would like that to inform how we write the guidelines going forward. Is there anyone that would like to make a statement or maybe I'll create an issue and we can see where that goes from here?
JASON D. KAUNE: I should mention one other thing, too, Elizabeth, that there's a red-line version of the guidelines that will be available to everyone to take. We put you on the spot here, but we would love the feedback on the actual red-lines after.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: If you could introduce yourself and what your thoughts are, we would love it. Does that microphone work, too?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I'm the executive director for the Alaska state commission for human rights. Just for everybody else's background, so last year, our one Congressman for the State of Alaska died in office. He was the longest-serving member of Congress. He was the dean of the house at that time. Prior to that, when Frank M. was in the Senate and became governor, he appointed his daughter to the vacancy that he created. The legislature didn't like that. They said the governor is no longer allowed to make appointments in Alaska to vacant congressional seats, the division of elections has to stand up an election within 90 days of the vacancy.
So last year, Alaska also needed to implement ranked-choice voting for the first time and, all of a sudden, our division of elections was under the gun because now they had a vacancy and had to implement ranked-choice voting in 90 days. And it came to our attention at the human rights commission about a month before the special primary that doing an all by mail election, they were not providing in our opinion a reasonable accommodation for blind and low vision voters. They were attempting to do so with the online ballot delivery, but by their own admission in the context of our lawsuit, they described it as an origami folding process.
And that obviously still was just discussed, you have to have help to sign it in the right spot and get it into the mailbox. And so you lose your right to vote privately and independently. So I know that the division of elections in Alaska had based that online ballot delivery, those guidelines, based on a case that came out of the South. There was some other challenge to those guidelines and they were like this meets ADA standards.
Well, right that's a different circuit. And I don't think this is going to fly under state law, because Alaska state law is also more protective than federal law when it comes to discrimination. So getting rid of that as an option and/or doing an online ballot return would be huge. And my blind commissioner, who was driving a lot of this on the Human Rights Commission standpoint was talking about developing some kind of an app that would allow people to vote on their phone. How can you do that with levels of voting integrity and security, at least in Alaska, there already are some online systems for that, so I'm sure people have heard about the Alaska permanent fund dividend check that we all get. We do all of those applications now online, and we sign them digitally online.
So there are provisions already out there that at least meet the standard for financial systems and integrity from that standpoint. So I don't see any reason why that wouldn't also meet election integrity standards. Hawaii is doing that. We'll make that connection for you. We talked with people in Hawaii, they started doing this even before the pandemic, so they had a system in place and they've used it.
And so and then the other thing that the division of elections does have is they have these voting tablets. And the ones that the state has contracted with, are the Dominion voting tablets. What we have seen with the Dominion voting tablets is there's this weird keyboard thing that is not a normal QWERTY keyboard, and there are audio instructions to walk you through how to use this weird pointy box device, but it is really clunky, and even my commissioner is like why don't we just use a numeric keypad like all of us know how to use at an ATM machine that already has got Braille incorporated into the keypad and that's easy? We understand that.
So getting away from a specialized weird box that nobody is familiar with. That being said, if you are going to have a specialized weird box that nobody is familiar with, there should be opportunities to be able to practice with it ahead of time. So that's another thing my commissioner has had troubles with.
He gets there, he tries to vote, but he has to spend 30 minutes or an hour refamiliarizing himself with how that system works to be able to then vote. And we saw a demonstration done by the Division of Elections with the president of the Alaska chapter of the federation and yet, she's got three master's degree, and is brilliant, was born blind so she's been through this her entire life, and she was still frustrated by how long it took her to walk through that interface, even with someone with the Division of Elections doing it there and we're doing it out loud so everybody could hear it and be able to participate. So an opportunity to practice with those machines ahead of time.
Not necessarily here nor there, but the commission has also said well wait a second, one of the big problems in Alaska with elections is language, especially with our Alaska native languages, and the Dominion voting machines have the ability to accept up to eight different languages, and so the commission has asked the Division to pre-program those with more than just two or three languages. And that would also be a way to help satisfy some of the DOJ concerns. I don't know if that was helpful or not.
JASON D. KAUNE: Very helpful.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: So, I appreciate you raising some of those issues. One of the things that we have realized, and you brought it up. There is a tension between accessibility and people's perception of integrity of the process, and one of the things that we highlighted early on during our discussions is the signature requirement, how that can serve as an impediment to people who have vision issues or mobility issues in verifying a signature.
And then as far as electronic voting, there's a fear amongst some that it's internet voting, but I think Denise and you alluded to it, it's not internet voting; it is returning your ballot to the -- you're not voting online. You return your ballot to the election administrators where they can then start the process of counting.
And so, there's a difference there, and also to your point about security measures. We were very fortunate recently to do a tour of the Multnomah County elections division in Portland, Oregon, which is an all-mail voting state, and when they do signature verification, as you mentioned, they're using software that financial institutions use, so what we would like to do is take this opportunity to look at the guidelines and get input from you and really push the envelope on what is possible using the technology that is available.
And some of the things that we're talking about right now are also to your point about being able to try out the machinery first. That's also, we have these focus groups of individuals in the community, that would make it easy for us, for people to see what the pitfalls are because I think unfortunately, what we want is we want when election administrators are developing their laws and the systems, that they take all of their constituency into account, not just people who can see, who to your point, a very clunky keypad that I can see, it doesn't impact that, but we want people to think of everyone when they are developing their laws and guidelines. So and one of the things that we think we would like to push forward is, I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the UOCAVA, which is the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absent Voting Act.
On many of those, they are allowing people to vote electronically, talking about service people who are out doing what they do in a place where there is no mail. They have developed systems where people can return ballots and what we would like to see is we would like to see how that can be used for people who live here, who also may experience some of the same issues. Jason, are there other issues that you want to try to highlight?
JASON D. KAUNE: What I appreciate about the way you're saying that is what we're trying to do is frame these issues -- Elizabeth alluded to it before -- there's a lot of contention around election law right now, and legislators tend to look at it red or blue. We're trying to take a practical look, that these laws are being rewritten. This is a largely state-driven process and states are rewriting these laws. This is an opportunity to try to frame the debate as very practical of how to implement and push the envelope. I mentioned Hawaii earlier and we had them at our earlier presentation. Great opportunities to try to share those experiences, but one of the reasons we're here is we want to make sure we aren't missing anything. The practice point is a great point that we didn't have.
I have one more to add as well and that is greater training. We experienced times when those machines have existed at the polling location, but the person who knows how to use it is sick that day, or oh, we can't get it to work, and so it's just kind of a too bad, so sad, we'll walk you to the polling booth and help you fill out a ballot. And including people who are trying to get poll workers who have disabilities, reaching out to the community to actually have those poll workers on site. I think we've missed that piece, as well.
The other thing that you might want to do, as far as poll workers are concerned working with people with disabilities, is they have training courses for the poll workers. We have suggested in the City of Chicago that they invite people with disabilities to be part of the class, so that the first time a poll worker sees a blind person, they are not bothered by that and want to grab the person.
Or if they see a blind person with a sighted person, they don't go over and start talking to the sighted person. That's one of the things that we are recommending is that when they do their training classes, they invite various people from the disability community to be part of the training. The other thing that you should be aware of, two of the 13 states that have electronic ballot returns for print-disabled voters are Colorado and West Virginia.
And both of those states, to minimize any security issues, have detailed documents -- and I know because we just got the one for West Virginia. It's about a 67-page document of the things that state does to make sure that their election, that the vote by mail process remains secure as it could possibly be. So, it might be worth looking at that and maybe addressing best practices that a local election authority can take to minimize security concerns.
JASON D. KAUNE: And one reason why we really want feedback on every stage of the process is I think what we've observed is that focusing on the actual voting, it's key, whether you're doing it in person or mail, is an obvious place to start, but you really need to start much earlier.
We had commentary that said the problem with these voter registration packets is they are doorstops, not useful documents. They're not accessible. If you can't get accessibility to register, it doesn't matter how accessible the vote is. All the way to the other end, the curing provisions, where there hasn't been a lot of thought. There are more and more states who have put in more integrity measures, have more complicated cure opportunities. Now there are opportunities to cure, but are those opportunities to cure accessible? If not, then you're losing a vote. So, we definitely want to hear about anyone's thoughts and experiences about every stage of the process. That's something we're trying to really emphasize. Has anybody done anything on the voter verified paper trail? That's a tough issue. I don't know, Elizabeth, if you could explain that.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: I think my understanding, and I think probably all of you are much greater experts on this than myself, is a lot with the voter verified paper trail, there's a fear that you're losing the privacy of your ballot because your ballot might look differently than everyone else's.
And so, there's I think, after Bush v. Gore, after 2000, HAVA pretty much mandated a voter-verified paper trail, because they didn't want a butterfly ballot or anything like that, and it's interesting because really around the time in 2000, I live in northern Virginia in Fairfax County. Except for when I was in law school and college and I voted absentee, I have voted electronically the entire time, with a touchscreen, so I never thought about a paper trail or anything like that.
But then the fear was after HAVA and with the punch ballots and the butterfly ballots that then we don't want error to be that way so let's do everything electronically. But then the problem then was there was no verified voter trail so you had an upsurge to go that way, which is now I think turning into the DRE, the direct recording -- it's the ballot that then you can see, you have a paper ballot, and they feed it through the machine so they can look at it that way, so there is a paper trail. But with the voter verified paper trail for those in the disability community, there's a privacy fear.
And so what we would also like to do is have a discussion where what people in community think about a way to have some sort of trail in the process because I think unfortunately, in voter I.D., there are some trends that started and I don't think a photo I.D. is going to go away, but what we need to do then is we need to work with people and find out how do we make that accessible for everyone? For instance, on a photo I.D., if you don't have one and the state mandates one for voting, then it's incumbent upon the state to provide a free photo I.D. for people so that's not a barrier. And we realize that just offering it is not enough. We really must look at how people can do that, so we would love to have a discussion with all of you about what might be a compromise on a voter verified paper trail.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's not about the voter verification, but I was just reading through and checking the policy. One of the major issues -- our members include those who have a spinal cord injury or are in a wheelchair, I focus on physical accessibility.
So, the guidelines don't go into -- posting notices to voters when they arrive to a voting location that's not physically accessible. With the employment laws, with the EEOC, in the workplace, you must have a poster that says these are your rights under employment laws, but I've never seen a poster outside of a voting location that says if you find this voting location accessible, here's how you file a complaint.
Even with other issues with accessibility in general, a common voter will not know how to file a complaint. They won't know what agency to go to. They won't know that they can contact an attorney. They won't know if there's nonprofits in the area that can help.
With other types of law areas, etc., there are explicit instructions and information on how to file a complaint. I did see in the DOJ regulations that on a ballot, you can put did someone interfere with your ability, did you feel that someone interfered with your privacy?
Even with that, it doesn't say if so, here's what you do. I was looking through the guidelines and it talks about rigorous enforcement, but unless we have complaints being brought, there's no way that any government agency is going to get involved. They have the DOJ settlement with Jefferson County in Kentucky that required a survey. They went out, they surveyed all the polling locations, found a majority to be inaccessible, but I'm sure that came -- the DOJ is not going to send a bunch of surveyors to every single county in every single state.
So, I think we need to bring more light for voters on what next steps they can do if they find -- I know we're working on laws and we're getting other laws taken away that are impacting accessibility, but what if it's a straight-up violation? I went around and helped look at D.C. polling places.
I went to my local voting location, and it was up three stairs, and their elevator is broken. Those three stairs completely stop a person from voting, especially if they are told that it's an accessible voting location and unless there's a way for them to inform someone, nothing is going to change, even simple things like that. I think there should also be something where there's a posting of your rights as a person with disabilities.
I think that that should be a requirement that every single voting location has a poster just like our EEOC, listing all their rights for the voters with disabilities and how to file a complaint if they feel like one of their rights was violated. How do we get that right and make that poster available to people -- do we post it; do we ask all the websites or all of the states to post something? How do we get it to them? Or is there something where we have something in Braille?
DENISE AVANT: One of the things you could do is not only put it on the website for the local election authorities as well as the state election authority that runs the whole thing. They could put it on their website, but you could also do a dedicated phone line, where you put the information there.
We have to understand that there are many people who don't have computers with JAWS and they still rely on the phone, so you can still use the phone for disseminating information. It would just be that dedicated line and a number that people could, if you give the proper voter education, just a dedicated number for people to call to get that information.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is it a good idea to have an accessibility point person at each site?
DENISE AVANT: It depends on what state you're in, probably. One other thing that I would like to suggest with regard to polling places not being accessible, I know that's been a problem in the City of Chicago where I'm from, and one of the things that I thought -- and maybe it would solve some of the accessibility issues, is that for mayor of the City of Chicago, when we did our primary back in February, you could go any place in the city, as well as some of the two main sites downtown.
So, let's face it, there are polling places that have been around for years and years and we know those are not accessible to wheelchair and mobility-impaired users, but if the person would have an ability to go elsewhere, to another polling place that might be nearby that is accessible, that person would still be able to vote. That's not a perfect solution, but it's at least, you know, until the city or town corrects the inaccessibility of an in-person place.
When they send out their provisional ballot, just take one little piece of paper with your rights on it, how to file a complaint. That is a very simple process to start disseminating the information for what people's rights are in the voting process, and you can include rights beyond just that of people with disabilities. Include the right, is someone interfering? Were you stopped by someone right in front of the polling place that was telling you to vote for a specific person? Just adding one plain-language paper would be able to at least increase voter knowledge.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: I think -- go ahead.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi -- there is a requirement in the ADA for counties, for cities that have more than 50 employees, they have to have an ADA coordinator. And part of the job of that ADA coordinator is to have a complaint process.
And so, in our settlement agreement with -- County Texas, they were required to have an ADA coordinator for the election itself, separate from the county's ADA coordinator and they were also required to post a poster at each polling place inside that gave voters' rights and told people how to file a complaint.
And the poll workers there were trained to take complaints. If someone wanted to complain orally, the poll workers were required to write that information down and forward the complaint to the ADA coordinator. So there is some -- and I think they also put that information on their website so it's available.
JASON D. KAUNE: Well, technically, all polling places are required to be accessible. I've heard from counties over and over and all our polling places are accessible. Then we go and look and they're not.
So, I think you've got to figure out how to get beyond that disconnect, but I do understand some places that we have investigated, we've set up a situation where they post what polling places are accessible and which ones are not until they can get them all -- and so sometimes, that's helpful. I think that's what they're doing in Chicago. A list which of ones are accessible, which ones are kind of accessible and which ones are not. And then they offer alternatives if you can't get into the polling place, curbside vote.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And they have to do that?
JASON D. KAUNE: It's kind of a fact question. There needs to be some alternative.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Right.
JASON D. KAUNE: I would love to see the Harris County settlement, and we've -- the poll worker, we'll go to the question, issue is big. We have an initiative where we're trying to recruit more lawyers to be poll workers. We have a generational problem in poll workers and lawyers are well equipped. They don't need to be election lawyers. Lawyers willing to take that day to field those questions, because enforcement is something we need to focus on and the way it gets to you at DOJ or typically, this is litigation.
But you want to solve the problem, and the people who can solve the problem are those volunteers on the front lines, so the training of those poll workers and diversity and who they are is big. We have over 30 -- they're all online. There's one consent decree and the rest are settlement agreements, and poll worker training is first staff training and poll worker training is a part of that.
We always encourage the public entities to work with the local advocacy agencies. We recommend training by the regional ADA centers, and they do a lot of work on that. And we also encourage them to work with people, With the poster -- other than the website.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is there another way that information about the ADA coordinator is shared with people who are blind?
JASON D. KAUNE: I don't know.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: A question in the back.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: A quick follow-up. Real short. I went to the Maryland state board of elections website, and on their quick links, they have a report fraud link. They don't have anything about disability, until you get to frequently asked questions and there, it's not how to file a complaint. It's here's how to get a hold of someone who can help you with accessibility. Also, why are ballots not in an easy-to-read format, and particularly why all physical ballots are not in Braille to start with.
JASON D. KAUNE: So, one thing, and it relates to what was being said earlier about going to different ballot places, we have to get out of the mindset of 20, 30 years ago, where it's difficult in an election when you've got lots of precincts because you've got to create all these different versions of the ballots for different people.
And then you layer on languages and you layer other things and the comment we heard earlier, you have a doorstop and it's not accessible. But technology is a solution for that. It's why Chicago can now easily allow people to go to different places because they have an easy way to create a new ballot that is tailored to whoever comes in the room, instead of having boxes full of them.
INAUDIBLE QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE
JASON D. KAUNE: Same thing, I think technology is an opportunity there to create more tailored ballots. But there's no law. We have provisions here about ballot format.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: Right. We ended up running into a case in Southern California that basically said if you're sending in a Braille ballot, you can end up reading the Braille through the envelope, so your right to privacy is gone.
DENISE AVANT: And one of the things that initially brought the issue in Illinois to our attention when we had started campaigning for the accessible vote by mail in 2020 is that the legislature passed a law that says you could request your ballot in large print or Braille, but our problem was there was no way to mark or verify. So that would be an issue that I would think is how would you mark or verify the ballot? There's no way to really sign it, or whatever you're supposed to do with it, even if you got it into the correct envelope. You could still have the issue of having to get a third party to help you.
JASON D. KAUNE: So, Denise, was there thought that they were going to provide it in an easy-to-read format, but you still had to go to the original one to sign it and fill it out?
DENISE AVANT: We never got to that point because we managed to negotiate with the Illinois board of elections to provide at least an electronic ballot.
JASON D. KAUNE: Electronic delivery solves a lot of problems.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: It does. And I see we're coming close to our end time, but I'm wondering -- we really appreciate the input that we've received from you now. I'm wondering if Jacob can send around a sign-up sheet as we move forward on this project and we can put more meat on the bones of our guidelines.
I'm wondering if you all would be willing to look over and comment and tell us how we could rephrase things. We have the best of intentions, but we know we need the input to come from you, to make sure we do it the right way.
And I've heard some excellent suggestions here, and one of the things that we're hoping to capitalize on is, as Jason mentioned, we have an initiative called Poll Worker Esq. which encourages lawyers to volunteer as poll workers, but through that we're developing some good relationships with the NASED, the National Association of State Election Directors, and NASS, the National Association of Secretary of State.
So, our hope is as we can develop these guidelines, then we could go to our partners there and say hey, when you are developing your laws or whatever, why wouldn't you want a poster that says how to file a complaint and why wouldn't you put it in a place that is accessible to everyone?
To your point, as opposed to inside the polling place that might have these long corridors or a couple of steps to go up and down. So we really, we're very committed to this and we really want to take advantage of our partnerships, and to even work with NIFB. We would love to work with the NIFB to make sure it goes to the local chapters. Amy?
AMY: For those with computers, we have the link to the election guidelines and Jacob's e-mail and phone, as well.
JASON D. KAUNE: And I should mention, because you now have gotten a sense that these guidelines exist, what's going to happen next is once -- these are updated every couple of years for each election cycle. We've made this our priority for the next election cycle. The amended guidelines will be approved by the ABA at its next convention, and then published as policy, and sent to the national association of secretaries of state, which is why we're trying to come up with the seven issues here and new issues. These will be highlighted in the resolution and those are what the ABA will use as an advocacy piece. This is our priority for the next election cycle.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: And to your point about easy to read, we are well aware that our guidelines as they exist right now are not necessarily the most user friendly, and we think even the groups that we want to work with look at it and think it's not in the right format. So we would love to work with all of you as we sort of figure out the easy read version of our guidelines, how to phrase it and to be more inclusive and all of that. And I think what I'll do, I'll just stand by the door and if you're interested in being involved, I'm just going to ask you to write your e-mail address down, your name and organization. That way, I can stay in contact with you. We really do want your feedback.
This document it's an iterative process and we're really getting a chance to hear from people who have this on the ground expertise, and we want you to be involved. So, we want to have an open line of communication.
DENISE AVANT: One quick question before we close to Elizabeth and Jason. I don't know if you've had an opportunity to talk to Lou Ann Blake here at the National Federation of the Blind?
ELIZABETH M. YANG: She's been so busy leading up to this, but we'll follow up afterwards. I'm mentioning that because during every election cycle, there is a hotline here at the federation where blind and low-vision voters call in and share their experiences so she might have some more data that she can give you that might help you with the guidelines.
JASON D. KAUNE: That's great.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: Yes. One suggestion -- when you're talking about voting by mail and ensuring that blind voters or mobility-impaired voters can vote privately, I would also include people with learning disabilities, mental health disabilities, because sometimes, an audio version is nurture easier for them to understand. So we generally include people with print disabilities.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: And elderly it helps.
JASON D. KAUNE: The phone issue, all that, it's very helpful.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: This is perfect. That's the kind of feedback we're looking for. Does anyone else have any questions or comments? Well, thank you very much for spending the time and joining us for this hour. We look forward to working with you going forward, and really want all feedback. If you think something is totally wrong, please let us know, because we're still very early in this stage.
ELIZABETH M. YANG: All right. Well, thank you very much, and we look forward to working with you in the future. Take care.