The majority of polling places in the United States are not fully accessible, and disability rights activists are working to change that.
When Kenya Flores was working on her bachelor’s degree at Furman University in South Carolina, she wanted to vote in an election in her hometown in North Carolina and needed an absentee ballot. However, she quickly discovered that North Carolina does not offer absentee ballots for people who are blind or have print disabilities. This forced Flores, who is blind, to choose between missing the election or having a friend mark her ballot, thereby giving up her right to vote independently and privately.
“That was very unsettling because it was a vulnerable position. I had no way to verify that that person marked my ballot the way I specified, and unfortunately, that was my only option to have my vote counted,” explains Flores, who is now a Voting Access and Election Protection Fellow at Detroit Disability Power (DDP), an organization that works to build political power for the disability community.
As the general election approaches, disability-led organizations like DDP are expanding their efforts to fight common barriers that prevent voters with disabilities from accessing the ballot box. Nationwide, one in four adults has a disability, yet significant disparities in voting access for this age group remain. Disability organizers bring unique expertise, rooted in their lived experiences, to improve voting access and build a more inclusive democracy. The environment in which they work is challenging, with state-led voting systems across the country that are fragmented and require each state to develop its own unique strategy to combat voter suppression.
Research shows that the majority of polling places across the country are not fully accessible, each with their own potential barriers to voting for people with disabilities. Many states also have laws that restrict voting, such as limiting absentee voting, eliminating election day registration, and making early voting more difficult. These rules are most burdensome not only for voters with disabilities, but also for voters of color. Despite the expansion of mail-in voting as a pandemic response, more than 11% of voters with disabilities reported experiencing difficulties voting in the last general election.
“The disability community is often forgotten, even by progressive groups and groups that are trying to reach voters,” says Lila Zucker, organizing director of the New Disabled South (NDS), a nonprofit that advocates for disability rights and justice in 14 southern states, where more than 20 percent of the population is disabled, the highest percentage in the country.
Disenfranchisement is also rampant in the region, as Republican-led states invent new election-related crimes and toughen penalties. Last year, the Voting Rights Lab, an organization that tracks election bills across the country, identified a “voting access siege” in North Carolina. Neighboring Georgia made national headlines ahead of the 2022 midterm elections with a bill that would make it a crime to hand out food or water within 25 feet of voters waiting in line at a polling place. (A federal judge struck down the provision on First Amendment grounds last year, but it was upheld for the midterm elections.)
Recently, Alabama lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), which makes it a crime to help a voter with a disability fill out or submit an absentee ballot. A similar bill was enacted in Mississippi last year. While DDP’s Flores wanted to mark his ballot without assistance when he voted absentee while in college (he would have had the option for an assisted ballot), voters with disabilities in other states may rely on assistance that could lead to criminal charges under these laws. These differences show that voters with disabilities are not a monolith but have different needs.
The legal battle and passage of new laws could make a big difference in reducing voting barriers for Americans with disabilities. The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging many discriminatory voting laws in court, including Alabama’s SB 1. One of the ACLU’s coalition partners in that case is the Alabama Disability Advocacy Program (ADAP). “For many voters with disabilities, absentee voting may be the only realistic option to have their voice heard and their voice counted,” said ADAP. [and] “SB 1 creates yet another barrier to this important right,” ADAP Senior Litigation Counsel William Van Der Pol Jr. said in a press release announcing the lawsuit in April.
While lawyers fight to repeal restrictive laws, some policymakers are also working to improve voting access through new federal laws. Previous legislation, such as the Help America Vote Act of 2002, improved voting access for people with disabilities by requiring all polling places nationwide to have equipment, including accessible voting terminals, that allows people with disabilities to vote independently and with privacy.
The People with Disabilities Voting Act, reintroduced in the U.S. Congress earlier this year, could be an even bigger step forward. If passed, it would create an Office of Accessibility within the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, establish a National Resource Center on Disability Voting, expand voting options for people with disabilities in federal elections, and improve the accessibility of voting information and resources. Another bill reintroduced under the same bill, the Removing Access Barriers to People with Disabilities Running for Public Office Act, would protect people with disabilities who want to run for public office from being disqualified from receiving disability benefits or losing their benefits when they run.
Sarah Blahovec, co-founder, co-president and president of Disability Victory, which supports the bills, said both bills are “part of an ecosystem to ensure that people with disabilities have access to the ballot box.” Though Blahovec’s organization focuses on training, networking and leadership development for progressive candidates with disabilities, she asks, “How do we get more people with disabilities to run for office if they can’t actually get to the polls?”
Dessa Cosma, executive director of the DDP, stresses that these legal battles aren’t just about disability rights: “When you expand voting rights for people with disabilities, everyone wins,” she said. “When you limit voting rights, everyone loses, but disabled voters in particular.”
While the legal battle could provide a long-term solution to the barriers facing voters with disabilities, other organizational efforts are focused on making voting accessible to as many people with disabilities as possible within the confines of the current imperfect system.
At DDP, Flores and Cosma focus on improving polling place accessibility. The organization has been conducting polling place access audits since 2018, collecting data on common issues that may prevent people with disabilities from voting at their local polling places. In 2022, DDP conducted the largest polling place access audit in U.S. history, auditing 261 polling places in 15 jurisdictions in Metro Detroit, serving nearly one million Michigan voters. The audit consists of a 23-question survey that evaluates polling places in four categories. The categories include whether they have accessible parking, accessible entrances, accessible voting systems, and accessible voting booths. If they do not meet at least one of the four categories, the polling place is labeled as accessible.
In 2022, 84% of polling stations visited by DDP failed audits. This figure is consistent with a nationwide government survey conducted in 2017 with a smaller sample size, which found that 83% of polling stations surveyed were inaccessible. While the results are dire, Cosma said, “A lot of these are issues that are inexpensive or can be fixed at low cost.”
Of the 218 polling places that failed DDP’s 2022 audit, 67 failed in only one of four categories. Many polling places could have passed the audit if they added signage to help voters find accessible entrances, or oriented accessible voting booths to protect voter privacy, or remembered to turn on accessible voting machines. If these polling places improved in one failing category, the percentage of accessible polling places would jump from 16% to 42%.
To help polling places address access barriers, DDP is sharing audit data and building relationships with election officials. The data “gives clerks a better understanding of what the access barriers are,” Flores said. After the record-breaking polling place access audit, DDP created a toolkit so other organizations could replicate its methods in districts outside Detroit without starting from scratch.
Meanwhile, in the southern US, NDS is partnering with voter registration, education and turnout efforts to better include people with disabilities in its strategies, promotional materials and volunteer and staff opportunities. According to Zucker, one suggested intervention is for the organization to visit congregate settings such as sheltered workshops and nursing homes. “One of the most important things is to know where your disabled voters are,” she explains.
Initiatives like these will ensure more disabled voters have a say on important issues in the November election. “Many people with disabilities depend on the systems we elect to guide and regulate, including home- and community-based services and the condition of our roads, sidewalks, and public transportation,” Zucker explains. “People with disabilities also exist on the fringes, at the intersection of many identities, so many of the issues that concern everyone in this country also concern disabled voters.” Issues that concern all voters, like poverty, policing, and climate change, are acutely felt within the disability community. Disabled people experience poverty at twice the rate of non-disabled people and are more vulnerable to the effects of police violence and climate change.
To build political power on these issues, Cosma says, people with disabilities “must have access to our democracy.”
Marianne Dennin is a contributing writer for YES! Media covering social justice, environmental justice, and politics.
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