Free and fair elections depend on all voters having the ability to express their opinion. Unfortunately, voters with disabilities often face a variety of disproportionately burdensome barriers, from polling places without ramps to limited accessible voting options like voting by mail, limiting their ability to access the ballot and ultimately undermining their freedom to vote.
Increasing accessible voting options helps all Americans have their voice heard, but in the year following the 2020 presidential election, nine states passed new laws restricting access to the ballot.
Rather than creating barriers to voter registration and access to the ballot, states should implement pro-voter reforms that increase voter registration and participation in our democracy, and ensure that existing voting policies and procedures are accessible to voters with disabilities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about one in four American adults has a disability, which the CDC classifies as a range of disabilities including hearing, vision, cognitive and motor impairments.
While not all people with disabilities experience difficulties voting due to their disability, such circumstances can and do make voting more difficult for many Americans, and when restrictive laws create additional hurdles, it can make voting nearly impossible for some in the disability community.
According to a study released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), one in seven voters with disabilities will have difficulty voting in the 2022 midterm elections, and voters with disabilities are significantly more likely to encounter difficulties than voters without disabilities, 20% vs. 6%, respectively.
Because people have different levels of disability, there is no single way that everyone can vote, so offering a range of voting methods and opportunities gives voters with disabilities the freedom to choose the method that works best for them.
To maximize voting access for the disability community, early voting, voting by mail, curbside voting, and the ballot drop box should be available in addition to voting in person on Election Day. However, far from improving access, recent anti-voting laws and proposed bills in many states would limit access to these voting methods.
Ahead of the 2024 election, 14 states have enacted more than a dozen restrictive voting laws that disenfranchise voters with disabilities, including laws that criminalize absentee ballot assistance and limit access to mail-in voting.
In many cases, state legislators have intentionally excluded members of the disability community from the legislative process, preventing them from providing insights from their personal experiences with their state’s voting systems.
“I speak out because if passed, there will be collateral damage in my community, and we have been ignored throughout the bill’s proceedings,” Gaylon Tootle, a blind Black disability rights advocate in Georgia, wrote in an op-ed published while the state’s anti-voter bill, SB 202, was still being revised.
“Proposals to limit early voting, remove ballot collection drop boxes and even ban the distribution of water to people waiting in line at polling places are disrespectful. All of this is an attempt to say our communities don’t matter,” Tootle continued.
To help make voting more accessible to Americans with disabilities, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), on behalf of disability rights group Self Advocacy Solutions (SAS), the League of Women Voters of North Dakota (LWVND), and Maria Romo, a special education associate teacher with multiple sclerosis (MS), has filed a lawsuit demanding that North Dakota count all valid mail-in ballots.
Similarly, CLC represented the League of Women Voters of the United States (LWVUS), the League of Women Voters of New York State (LWVNY), and Carmelita Palmer, a New York resident who was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that causes hand tremors.
The lawsuit prevented states from using unreliable signature-matching processes to reject voters’ ballots, in part because the process can disproportionately affect voters with mobility disabilities.
As a result of CLC’s lawsuit, New York State relaxed its signature matching law to make it less restrictive. As a result, the rejection rate of mail-in ballots in the 2020 general election dropped from 14% to 4%. Additionally, approximately 9,000 New Yorkers were able to correct defects on their ballots and have their ballots counted.
CLC also successfully sued to suspend Rhode Island’s witness requirement during the pandemic, which would have made voting in 2020 extremely difficult for people with vision-related disabilities, like Miranda Oakley, who has been blind her whole life.
Additionally, in April 2024, CLC joined other voting rights, civil rights, and disability rights groups in filing a lawsuit against Alabama’s SB1, an anti-voter law that severely punishes voters who assist in obtaining an absentee ballot – a barrier that disproportionately impacts voters with disabilities.
Our democracy works best when all voters can participate, and removing barriers that impede voters with disabilities’ freedom to vote is essential to ensuring a fair and inclusive democracy.