Blind and visually impaired voters in California, who often must depend on others to deliver their mailed-in ballots, may be able to cast their votes electronically and privately, starting in 2028, under a plan tentatively approved by state election officials.<\/p>\n
The agreement this week between disability-rights groups and Secretary of State Shirley Weber follows an Oct. 2 ruling<\/a> by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of San Francisco that the current system violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws. Kim also cited the state Constitution’s mandate that “voting shall be secret.”<\/p>\n “Requiring assistance from another person to complete the voting by mail process is antithetical (to) voting privately and secretly,” the magistrate said.<\/p>\n According to a CalMatters report<\/a>, as of 2024, about 800,000 voting-age Californians had visual impairments. For those who, like most Californians, cast their votes by mail, the state provides technology that allows them to download their ballot and mark it on their own electronic devices.<\/p>\n But they “must then print the ballot and return it on paper, which many blind voters and voters with certain physical disabilities cannot do privately and independently,” said Fred Nisen, an attorney with Disability Rights California, an advocate for the voters in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n As Kim observed in her ruling, if a blind voter handed the ballot to another person to send it to the state, “that person could then review the voter’s selections and decide whether or not to return the ballot.”<\/p>\n The only current alternative, the advocates said in their lawsuit, is to vote in person, which would require many people to take time off from work or pay for transportation.<\/p>\n The suit was filed in 2024<\/a> on behalf of three visually impaired voters, the California Council of the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind in California. Weber, the state’s top elections official, is not appealing Kim’s ruling, and instead agreed to work on changes to the vote-by-mail system.<\/p>\n Nisen said Weber’s office agreed at a meeting this week that the best option was a “round-trip portal,” in which the voters could return their ballots to the state on the same electronic platform they used to mark their votes.<\/p>\n Election officials would then print the ballot so that it could be legally counted without access by anyone else, the attorney said. Thirteen other states already use similar procedures for blind and disabled voters, and many other states, including California, allow it for military voters and those who live overseas.<\/p>\n Nisen said Kim will consider the proposal in a hearing that is planned to be held in January. He said advocates for the voters “hope that the solution will be in effect in time for the March 2028 primary.”<\/p>\n Subscribe<\/p>\n There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25\u00a2.<\/a><\/p>\n