Family First supports the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment Bill 2010. The previous speaker has outlined all the details, particularly concerning the various options to enable vision-impaired voters to cast a secret vote. I will not go through all the provisions of the bill except to say that we support them without question.<\/p>\n
We understand, however, that the previous attempt to cater for this need among visually impaired people by producing Braille voting forms was a costly exercise and really overkill because of the lack of numbers of persons who want to vote using the Braille voting form. The development of e-voting and i-voting is very important and I believe a lot more could be done in this way.<\/p>\n
In the United States of America I attended the voting for the last presidential election, which elected Barrack Obama, and through a friendship with a person who was in charge of one of the local regional voting centres I investigated how electronic voting works in the United States. In fact, I was even given the opportunity to cast a vote for the various local representatives in the area based on the spurious evidence that for 22 years I have been an adjunct professor of an American university and they assumed somehow or other that I was an American citizen.<\/p>\n
I used the electronic voting systems and found them really helpful. I believe we in Australia have to move from the paper ballot to other forms of electronic and i-voting very quickly. We are being left behind in this field. I think it would be so much quicker in every way.<\/p>\n
The most important issue relates to people who cannot use normal systems because of lack of vision, but I would also include people with other disabilities such as those who cannot write, cannot read, or who suffer from disabilities such as dyslexia. Members have heard me speak on this issue many times in this House. We have taken steps and made some significant achievements in the Department of Education and Training in helping children and others with learning disabilities.<\/p>\n
Only last night I spoke about the Macquarie University programs to help people gain accessibility, particularly those people who cannot speak, write or read. The bill is a step in the right direction. It is important for democracy that all persons in society have access to voting. It is essential that people with disabilities are treated fairly. Therefore I support this bill on behalf of Family First.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Family First supports the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment Bill 2010. The previous speaker has outlined all the details, particularly concerning the various options to enable vision-impaired voters to cast a secret vote. I will not go through all the provisions of the bill except to say that we support them without question. We understand, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}