CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: Thank you.Let\'s turn to our last panelist,
Lance Gough, fromthe Chicago Boards of Elections.

MR. GOUGH: Thank you very much. Afterlistening to the panel, I have
prepared a writtenstatement, but I would like to give that to you for
the record but I would like to answer some questionsand explain from the
election official\'s point ofview.

First of all, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Lance Gough.
I\'ve been the executive director for the Chicago Board of Elections for
over 17 years.

We are one of the largest election jurisdictions in the United States. I
serve 1.4 million registered voters. We have over 2,700 polling places,
precincts. I do have the day-to-day operation of the staff of a hundred
and thirty-five people. Also, additional extra hires we do during
election time.

I am the past president of IACREOT, the International Associate of
Clerks, Recorders, and Electric Officials and Treasurers. I am the past
president of the Association of Election Commission Officials of
Illinois.

I have served on many panels in the past. The National Postal Task
Force, and in the City of Chicago I have organized and served on the
Advisory Committee for People with Disabilities to help everybody
achieve full access to the polling place.

After saying that, you know after the 2000 election, election officials
had to step back and look at what they\'re doing. It\'s not just putting
ink on paper and having somebody go in and vote. We have to remember
that that voter only goes in once or twice a year for ten minutes. In
that time, they have to cast a very important ballot.

We in the City of Chicago took a look at our equipment, signage,
materials. At the time, everything was written for an attorney to
understand. Well, most of our constituents aren\'t attorneys.

And Craig not to say anything but you and I have had discussions in the
past. Don\'t let an attorney write what you need to read. And I say that
with all respect for attorneys since I am married to one. And I am
attending law school at the beginning of next year.

We did take a look at all of our signage. In fact, we had a partnership
with the American Institute of Graphics to review all of our materials
and found out that it was hard and difficult for somebody who is not an
election official, who is not in the election industry to understand.

It\'s like we had a group of judges of elections and we sat them down
and said what can we do to make it simpler, easier for you. And one
gentleman in the back room stood up and said make it simple stupid.

That is something I carry with me all the time. We do need to make the
voting processes as simple as possible. In fact at present time to be
here at this commission is just to let you know how I support this
organization.

It\'s less than six weeks away from a major election. I\'m sweating
bullets sitting right here. We have mailed over 5,000 military ballots,
and we receive only 200 back. I am very, very worried about the rights
of the military.

But to move on, it\'s just that we need and at this time we\'re also
looking at new voting equipment in the City of Chicago and the county of
Cook. This is probably going to be a \$60 million purchase. But the
equipment we are looking at does not answer all the questions.

Bill, you\'ve talked about looking at voting equipment that doesn\'t
answer \-- doesn\'t hit all the points we need. I am telling everybody
right now no it does not. In fact, it looks like the City of Chicago and
the county of Cook may sit down and rewrite what we need to see as a
piece of equipment. Because right now \-- In fact, after 2000 election
everybody thought the City of Chicago would go in and purchase new
voting equipment. No because we did not see any equipment out there that
could satisfy the needs of the citizens of the City of Chicago, and it
would be an in justice to purchase something just say we purchased
something.

So, we are looking at a lot of equipment right now. We\'re trying to
figure out what is needed. We do have focus groups. In fact, I know a
lot of elections officials around the United States are looking at new
equipment and having focus groups in their cities, in their towns to
look at how to make the election process a lot easier.

The other item we talked about, voters. We have to talk about judges of
elections or poll workers.

In the City of Chicago, I am responsible for training 14,000 poll
workers. Fourteen thousand. Do you know what type of people we get from
everywhere from people from the north shore to some of the people that
are barely able to make it to the polling place and are just working for
that hundred dollars on election day. And what we need to do is make
sure those people are the ones that can help somebody coming in to vote.

That\'s their responsibility; to help them vote, to set up the equipment
in the morning. My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, was 83 years old,
and I saw her girlfriend pick her up. And she had a lawn chair with her.

I said mom where are you going. She said I am going to vote. I said why
do you have a lawn chair. She said I can\'t stand up at that booth.
Right after that, we had chairs installed in all of our polling places
so somebody who cannot stand up in a booth can sit down and vote.

Election officials have been during this next couple of weeks will get a
bad wrap we are trying to hold down the vote, we are in collusion. I
just want to let everybody know I am an election official, but why would
I risk my job, my livelihood, over something or doing something illegal?
I wouldn\'t do it.

When I wake in the morning, I have to look at my daughter in the face
and I want her to be proud of her father. In the City of Chicago, I\'m
happy to say political influence, other irregularities rather than \--
right now are not in place. Those are in the past. I\'ve had the Federal
Government in looking at our elections. They have not found anything
wrong, thank God.

With that, I would just like to say, we are looking at how to make it as
easy as possible for that voter to come in. Remember they only come in
twice a year and only spend ten minutes.

So, make that voter experience in the polling place so they can come
back and vote. I think we lose a lot of people from voting because they
go in, find out it\'s so difficult, come out, and don\'t come back. What
we need to do is make sure that voter stays and continues voting. Thank
you very much.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: Thank you. Just to let people know, there are
copies of some of today\'s testimony up on the front table. And we will
post it all on the web site within two weeks. Any questions?

MS. MILLER: I don\'t have any questions. I just want to say I can
sympathize with you with respect to what you\'re saying about poll
workers. Getting them in there. Hoping you have the respect, who are
really sensitive to others who may not be able to really understand what
they have been trained to do and go into precinct and what they have to
do.

I had an experience last Tuesday we had local elections here in
Washington. One of my more astute, which I thought, was responsible
captain said to me later in the week that she had individuals come into
the precinct whose names were not on the master index list where they
sign in to be voted.

She indicated to me I looked at theirinformation and I thought their
names should be on there. Does it occur to you maybe they weren\'t
registered. That is scary to think. This is someone who was more astute,
certainly not at the lower end of learning curve, yet had not thought
this individual may not be registered to vote which is why their name
was not listed on the list as a registered voter. From that she said I
then gave them a ballot which was more scary.

MR. GOUGH: That happens more often than we think. In the City of
Chicago, March 16th was the first time we used provisional. It was
supposed to be a safety net. We had one location we had four polling
places. A gentleman walked in went to vote and always voted in this
building, and the lady says I don\'t see you on the list. Here, vote
provisional.

On the other side of the gym was his polling place where all of his
materials, his preprinted application for ballot, his signature, his
name was on the poll sheet. Everything was there.

To try to get that across to that poll worker is very, very, difficult.

MS. MILLER: I think where we are at is lend our process to volunteers.
You bring them in and train them and pray literally that they do what
you have asked them to do.

But that goes to another points that\'s been made, the memory
limitation. And the fact that you train the trainee doesn\'t necessarily
allow them to remember what they\'ve been trained to do. I think that\'s
part of the problem that we face with respect to the precinct operation.

MR. GOUGH: We also pray that they show up. We train 14,000 poll workers,
and we find out on election day twenty-five hundred don\'t show up.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: Ms. Hillman.

MS. HILLMAN: I have not so much a question. But I want to acknowledge a
comment Lance made and also Alice Miller and any other elected official
in the audience because I thought about that and thought well NIST go
ahead.

To do the forum that would involve some election officials just a few
weeks before election.

On the one hand we need to believe that the end result we hope and
expect to be useful to election officials, and on the other hand to take
your time to come from Chicago we appreciate very much and even from
Alice to come from D.C. at this critical point because voters expect
everything is going to be just fine on November 2nd.

MS. MILLER: And it will be.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: I do have one question for you, and Jim you will
be up next. You mentioned that you did this review of the signage in
collaboration with AIGA. How did that partnership get initiated?

MR. GOUGH: It was not so much me begging but looking for input from
everybody.

We did have a graphic artist, and he says Lance my organization would
love to look at your materials. And it was a voluntary basis. We sat
down. We also worked with the universities to review our materials, our
voting equipment.

As election officials, we\'re not that proud. We will accept help
anywhere we can get it.We were really happy to have a partnership with
the AIGA.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: I\'m put in a pitch for the visibility
professional associations assembled a list of graphic artist usability
specialists around the country. It was interesting in the form we asked
them to fill out it is clear that many of them see this as a public
service. If anybody is looking for some here is a list of people that
actually stepped up and said we\'re interested.

MR. GOUGH: And there is a listening on the web side.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: Jim, do you have any questions?

MR. ELEKES: You have probably become one of the largest voting blocks of
any district in the country. I am wondering have you ever done
demographics relative to the number or percentage of individuals with
disabilities who are registered versus those who actually vote?

MR. GOUGH: Yes. What we did is have a partnership with every
organization that had handles people with disabilities to figure out why
people are not registered. People with disabilities who are not
registered why they do no vote.

It\'s something that we are still working on. In fact, we set up a
committee. We have increased the number of people with disabilities.
Their voting has almost doubled since we have. We have teamed up with
Lighthouse for the Blind, The American Way.

There are so many other groups we have partnerships to increase the
number of people with disabilities to make sure it\'s easier for them to
register and vote.

MR. ELEKES: As a quick follow-up and I am not holding you to this, can
you recall the top three issues or concerns or human factors relating to
difficulty by individuals with disabilities when they are voting?

MR. GOUGH: The first one was access. Access to materials to register to
vote. We made it a lot easier when you have the Internet. The Internet
is not the end all and do all. That was one item.

The other thing was location, and just contacting our office. In the
City of Chicago, you have to understand we do have an infrastructure
that does not \-- is not conducive to somebody in a wheelchair or to
have parking. We have a lot of high rises, a lot of stairs.

We do have curb-side voting. Somebody can contact our office. I will
make sure there is somebody out at the curb so they can vote. Somebody
in a wheelchair.

Right now the City of Chicago are about 87 percent accessible. We\'re
trying our goal to make it a hundred percent accessible with the federal
money that we have, that we\'re spending. Making polling places
accessible. It\'s working quite well.

You have to remember that polling place I only am renting them for one
day of the year. Our polling places change. Every election we have
anywhere from out of the twenty-seven hundred polling places, we have
500 to a thousand that change.

It\'s hard to find locations that are accessible. Hopefully if we can
come up with the equipment that is as user friendly we can bring that
down to the curb and have somebody vote.

Until we have the City of Chicago remove all stairs, I don\'t know when
we will be able to get a hundred percent accessible. But we are working,
and that is our goal.

MR. ELEKES: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: We have 30 seconds left. Does anyone on the
panel have a last question that we can answer quickly.

MR. BURKHARDT: I have a question for Kim and maybe Bill. Is the incident
of dropoff among disabled individuals higher than compared to the
general population? That could be over-voting or under-voting.

MR. BRACE: I don\'t think there is data that would allow us to totally
answer that question. We know that dropoff can be significant. I was
about ready to cite one thing that we\'ve seen in the data that when you
have a multi-candidate contest, a vote for more than one, you\'re much
more likely to have a larger dropoff because of the over-voting.

And I cannot recall from visiting Lance\'s office in the March primary
that they had votes for national delegate on the ballot. It was a vote
for seven.

There was in many of the congressional districts they were elected from
over a hundred and twenty candidates on the ballot. That meant that you
went to multiple pages on the punch card device.

And I don\'t know how many ballots I saw on election day when they were
going through and counting that people were voting seven on one page,
seven on the next page, seven on the third page, and, therefore,
invalidating their ballot.

One of the problems I see in terms of communication is that poll workers
and in Lance\'s case in Chicago his punch card reader device will kick
back when there is an over-vote. And I was observing what poll workers
were telling the voters when their ballots came back.

Many times they simply said are you comfortable with your vote. That\'s
not the right question to ask. And that\'s a communication piece.

So, clearly there needs to be more work on something like that, but I
don\'t think we have good enough data to be able to say it is a problem
on a disability side.

We may when we start getting the election results from polling places
where you have a separate machine that\'s more accessible to handicap if
people just go with a single machine.

You might be able to at that point in time be able to tell if you\'re
able to allocate and look at votes by a machine in a precinct.

MR. KILLIAM: I wanted to add that we have to be careful about the human
factor, and that\'s motivation. The motivation for a person with
disabilities to be able to vote independently for the first time they
will accept, I suspect, some of worst design problems and some of the
worst human factor problems you can imagine because they are so thrilled
by the possibility.

That\'s human nature to compensate. Unfortunately I think if we didn\'t
compensate as much or tolerate it, we wouldn\'t have bad designs
anywhere, but that is the nature of it.

You can replace a voting machine and find it has absolutely no effect
not because the design was better but because users figured it out. They
always do.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: Mr. Gough.

MR. GOUGH: I am sorry. I\'m jumping out of my seat right now. Just to
let you know that this person with the disability who goes into the
polling place to vote even though it\'s a secret ballot if you talk to
that person he\'s going to make sure he votes that entire ballot.

If you have somebody with a disability that gets into that polling
place, I guarantee you he will vote that entire ballot.

And we did do a study after the March election where we had delegates
and alternate delegates. The problem is we had so many Presidential
candidates by that time after the March 16th election that dropped out.
We had people filing for delegates and alternate delegates.

Carol Mosley Brown who was from Illinois, from Chicago. There were
people voting for Kerry, and they said Carol is still on the ballot. I
thought she dropped off. I am going to vote for her anyway.

This was a factor. It was more voter confusion than actually anything
else. And I wanted to make that clear. If Kim doesn\'t agree with me,
that is all right.

CHAIRPERSON QUESENBERY: We\'re going to take this out of order. The
second panel is looking at issues in accommodating diversity and privacy
in the polling place.

And I\'m going to back away from the machines to walking in those
muti-purpose rooms and church basements and what happens there.