Vision Australia is concerned NSW will have trouble finding an equivalent or better system than iVote, which was shelved in early 2022.
In a submission [pdf] to an inquiry into technology assisted voting, the not-for-profit said iVote’s “disappearance” as an option for people who are blind or have low vision had left an “equity and inclusion vacuum” that would be hard to fill.
Vision Australia said that it, “along with other organisations in the blindness and low vision sector, [has] always regarded the suite of voting options that comprised iVote as the ‘gold standard’ in independent, secret and verifiable voting for people who are blind or have low vision.”
“We have promoted iVote widely and often to other jurisdictions throughout Australia, and we have not observed any voting options that come close to iVote’s offerings, not only in terms of independence, secrecy and verifiability, but also in terms of amenity and convenience for voters,” Vision Australia said.
The government ruled out using iVote for the upcoming state election because it could not confidently update the system in time to fix glitches that impacted local government elections in late 2021.
An issues paper [pdf] published in November last year suggests a “technology assisted voting” system like iVote may not make a reappearance until the state elections in 2027.
Vision Australia alleged iVote had failed in part because too many people were invited to use it.
“Expanding the eligibility criteria for a particular form of voting may lower the unit costs of implementing it, but the end result may be to reduce the benefits,” the organisation said.
“This was unfortunately the case with iVote.
“From 2011 to 2021, the eligibility criteria were expanded far beyond the original scope, and the capability of the system to accommodate the increasing number of users was not maintained, resulting in eventual and costly failure.
“The removal of iVote has had the greatest negative impact on people who are blind or have low vision – the very group that iVote was introduced to benefit.”
Vision Australia added later in its submission that it has “no objection to any form of technology assisted voting being made available to other groups of electors, provided always that there is no potential or actual impact of any kind, including increased risk of data breaches and system delays, outages or failures, on voters with a disability.”
Whatever technology route the government went down, Vision Australia said it needed to at least mirror the options that iVote provided.
“Any future technology assisted voting must, as a minimum, be equivalent to the suite of options provided by iVote,” it said.