Volunteers from Grand Island's Vocational Rehabilitation spent February 10th checking voting locations for proper handicapped accessibility as part of the Help America Vote Act.

The act will require every polling site to have a laptop voting device that allows disabled people to vote privately. Problems at the polling places ranged from material at the voting location to accessibility of bathrooms to the availability of a public phone.

Snow in parking lots made it difficult to see if adequate handicapped parking is available.

Hall County Election Commissioner Dale Baker says she commissioned the survey to find out what is wrong and fix it.

Three groups from Vocational Rehabilitation hope to hit all 30 or so polling places in Grand Island by this summer and help Baker work through the issues. The hope is to make a good number of changes by the November election.