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State Updates Voting System For The Visually Impaired

Voter Assistance Terminal
McKenna Ross
/
WKAR
Scott Norris demostrates a voter assistance terminal that will be used in the upcoming midterm election.

Visually impaired voters in Michigan will experience an updated voting method this November. New equipment and technology, called voter assistance terminals, will be in every precinct on Election Day.

The machines use a keypad with various buttons, synthesized speech and a monitor to display and read a ballot to the voter.

 

Before, voters who are visually impaired needed a friend, family member or precinct worker to mark the ballot for them. The new systems only require a precinct worker to enter a unique ID card that starts the program.

 

Scott Norris is legally blind. He says he first used the new system in August for the primary elections in Lansing and found it to be easy to use and helpful to his disability.

 

The big issue here is this provides me the same right that everybody else has -- and that's to vote in private and to vote independently," Norris says.

 

Midterm elections will be held November 6.

 

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