By: Maurice Turner
Security is fundamentally about minimizing risks while allowing the user to actually accomplish their task. The user plays an important role in their own security. The challenge is that there is no such thing as a standard “user.” This is especially true when it comes to elections. Voters come from diverse backgrounds and can range in age from 17 to 107. One thing that they all have in common is that at some point in their lives every voter will need, or at least benefit from, some form of disability accommodation. Each of those accommodations carries the risk of introducing a potential vulnerability if accessibility is not included in the security conversation from the beginning.
Voters with disabilities have their rights protected by a number of federal laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). These protections are distilled and operationalized by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG).
Principle Five of the recent 2.0 update clearly states that the goal is to “ensure that everyone can use the voting system, regardless of their abilities or preferences.” This goes beyond simply casting a ballot. It includes other activities such as registering to vote, observing an audit, and researching candidates or issues. All of these activities interoperate through a variety of products and services. Trying to adequately defend them is a complex and expensive undertaking. It is also a necessary undertaking in order to ensure that voting activities are accessible as possible.
Identifying the different types of accessibility needs is the first step in understanding how to implement disability accommodations securely. The EAC regularly hosts roundtable forums to hear perspectives from experts and advocates at the intersection of disability, accessibility, and security. In addition, the EAC recently released its 2020 Disability and Voting Accessibility Survey to identify the challenges faced by voters with disabilities.
The survey, conducted by Rutgers University, highlighted that voters with disabilities continue to face difficulties participating in election activities at rates higher than voters without disabilities. This comes at a time when there has been a dramatic shift away from in-person voting at polling places toward methods like mail-in ballots. This is not surprising given the breadth and severity of potential impairments that a voter may face such as challenges with hearing, vision, cognition, language, and/or mobility.
The ultimate goal of accommodations is to allow the voter to act as independently as possible. That quite often places the burden on the individual voter to be informed about assistive technologies built into voting systems, their personal assistive technologies, and how those capabilities can (or cannot) work together. Users would greatly benefit if these systems had the capabilities to securely communicate with minimal user configuration or interaction.
Assistive technologies are increasingly becoming features of operating systems that are being used by individuals that may not self-identify as having a disability. For example, a website can offer to increase text size or contrast to improve legibility without the user needing to wearing reading glasses. How many people would self-identify the inability to read small text on their phone as a “disability”?
Other accessibility options include screen reading or language translation. These accommodations introduce risks because the provider and the user need to trust the transaction if that service is done by a third-party. More sophisticated personal technologies such as smart headphones and augmented-reality glasses are coming soon. The developers of these devices are targeting mainstream users with the promise of enhancing everyday tasks. That means election officials can expect more voters will be bringing a variety of personal technologies to help them with their voting experience at the polls and at home.
Just like security, effective accessibility can’t just be tacked on at the end of the development process. It is important to remember that there are legal obligations to ensure that every voter has the opportunity to participate in the electoral process (including education, registration, acting, and verification) as independently as possible. Oftentimes this places additional burden on voters to incorporate their own assistive technologies and manage the risks that come along with them.
Election officials and system manufacturers can learn about these accessibility needs and assistive technologies through convenings, advocates, and users. By addressing those needs and considering how to mitigate the associated risks earlier in the system design and development processes, all voters can benefit from more secure inclusion of assistive technologies.
Maurice Turner
Election Security Analyst, USC Election Cybersecurity Initiative
Maurice Turner is a recognized technologist and cybersecurity expert who regularly provides analysis for television, print, and social media on issues relating to election security and election administration. He has held numerous positions in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, including the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and the United States Senate.