Voting Access
September 12-16, 2022 is Disability Voting Rights Week. It may sound just like another interesting item on the annual calendar of modern cultural observances and “awareness days.” And people unfamiliar with the everyday experience of disability might reasonably ask why we even need a “Disability Voting Rights Week.”
Don’t disabled Americans already have the right to vote? It seems like an easy question to answer — of course they do! Or they should have. But the whole subject of disabled people and voting is more complex than it might appear at first.
According to researchers Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse of Rutgers University, 17.7 million Americans with disabilities voted in the 2020 Elections. By any measure, that’s a formidable number of voters — more than most people probably think.
But that number should be higher. Kruse and Schur also found a 5.7 point voting gap between people with disabilities and non-disabled people in 2020. This gap was slightly narrower than in the 2018 Midterms, an encouraging sign of progress, at least in voter turnout. But the gap is still significant. And this disabled voter participation gap has been fairly consistent for decades. So while most, if not quite all disabled people have the legal right to vote, something is certainly keeping a lot of them from exercising that right.
The conventional, semi-official view on disability and voting is that by and large, disabled people should be able to vote with no more difficulty than non-disabled voters, and that if they are voting less, that’s a problem to be fixed. Laws and regulations are in place to support this goal — including basic non-discrimination, and requirements for polling place accessibility and accessible methods of actually casting a vote. There is a rough consensus that disabled people should be able to vote freely and without undue difficulty.
However, more than a few people hold contrary beliefs about disabled people and voting. While they may not always talk about it openly, some people really seem to believe that it’s natural for disabled people to vote at lower rates, and probably a good thing too. And these beliefs, even if they are in the minority, have real-life effects.
Lilian Aluri, #RevUp Voting Campaign Coordinator at the American Association of People with Disabilities cites two related ideological beliefs that discourage and prevent disabled people from voting. One is the notion that disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to vote. The other is the idea that voting processes should be at least somewhat difficult and exacting, as a way of ensuring that only the most informed and committed citizens vote. “This belief hides a very pernicious idea of who deserves to vote,” says Aluri, “and is rooted in barely masked racism and ableism.”
Along with the current politicized panic over “voter fraud,” these ableist ideas about disability and voting create and sustain what Aluri calls a “perfect storm of propaganda“ that helps keep voting difficult and restrictive for people with disabilities.
Another related perspective on the disability voting gap is a bit more subtle, and can sometimes come from within the disability community itself. It’s the idea that voting is actually pretty easy for disabled people, and that access barriers are mostly exaggerated. This implies that it’s disabled people themselves who either don’t care to vote or aren’t persistent enough to cope with any barriers to voting they may face.
Many if not most disabled voters have experiences some form of discrimination or physical barriers on the way to casting their votes. But the disability community is diverse. Each disabled person’s experience is unique. And some disabled people who have lived better accommodated, freer, more privileged lives sometimes have trouble believing the horror stories told by other disabled people they may have never met. The argument that, “If you really care about voting, won’t let a little discrimination and a step or two stop you,” is seductive and persistent, even among disabled people.
Discussing the many factors discouraging disabled people from voting, Kruse and Schur describe a vicious cycle in which the perception that disabled people don’t vote allows politicians and election officials to neglect barriers that deter or prevent disabled people from voting. “One of the biggest barriers to voting by people with disabilities,” says Kruse, “is the assumption that they are unlikely to vote.” So polling place accessibility, poll worker training, availability of alternatives like mail-in voting, and accessibility of election information, all continue to be low priorities for politicians and election officials. This overall neglect in turn discourages disabled people from voting.
It’s a little like the circular arguments business owners use for not making their stores accessible. They hardly have any disabled customers, so why spend money and effort on a few people’s “special needs?” But lack of access itself is a major reason why they have so few disabled customers. It’s much the same with voting.
The legal right to vote, physical access to voting, and encouragement to vote are different things. Intentionally or not, making voting a little harder for anyone tends to make voting much harder for people with disabilities. In addition to persistent physical barriers, recently stepped-up efforts to “safeguard” voting methods and processes are, Lilian Aluri describes, “creating a culture of intimidation both of voters and of poll workers.” While most disabled people have a legal right to vote, there are still more than enough barriers to undermine that right.
For example:
- Polling places are supposed to be accessible, but on Election Day, they still often aren’t.
This includes obvious barriers like narrow doorways and steps at entrances, and seemingly less harmful barriers, like inaccessible restrooms and inadequate parking. But even “minor” physical barriers can render the voting experience impossible for people with certain kinds of disabilities. And while strides have been made in making voting methods themselves accessible, systems vary from state to state and even district to district. All of this uncertainty is often amplified by confusion among poll workers, who are mostly lightly-trained volunteers.
- The requirements and logistics of registering and voting are burdensome to many people with disabilities.
It may seem like a trivial matter to require official identification to vote. But many disabled people don’t have a driver’s license, and obtaining a non-driver ID costs money and can involve a surprising number of logistical steps and trips to offices — each of which adds layers of complication and deterrence to people who may already struggle to coordinate and carry out the most basic daily tasks in inaccessible environments.
This is also why it deters disabled voters when early voting, mail-in ballots, and other voting alternatives are narrowed or eliminated. The more different ways there are for disabled people to vote, the more their right to vote is made real and practical. When voting can only happen on one day, in one way, at one place, it increases the number of ways disabled people’s voting plans can fall through. A missed or late bus, a friend or neighbor who suddenly can’t give a ride, a day of pouring rain, a wheelchair malfunction, or just an especially sick or painful day can all mean a lost opportunity to vote, when there is only one way to vote on offer.
- People with certain disabilities also find it very hard to identify and access a truly independent and accessible method for voting.
For example, mail-in voting is a welcomed method for people with mobility impairments, transportation barriers, or fragile health. But paper ballots marked with a pen aren’t so accessible to blind people, or to some people with cognitive or perceptual impairments. And while disabled people have an important right to assistance in the voting process if they want it — such as a friend or family member to help them complete a ballot or work a voting machine — disabled people also want like everyone else to be able to cast a private ballot to the greatest extent possible.
Meanwhile some disabled people are still outright denied the right to vote, directly and explicitly. As already noted, many people still really believe that people with certain disabilities shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Election officials, care workers, and even family members who think this way can and sometimes do exercise unauthorized authority to question or deny a disabled person’s right to vote. Plus guardian and conservatorship laws sometimes go too far and unfairly bar disabled people from voting, with no real justification for doing so.
Disabled people still cannot take their right to vote for granted, because it’s still harder for a great many of them to vote than it is for others. They can’t take the vote for granted because there are active ideologies out there both passively and actively working to make voting harder or impossible for disabled people.
For more information on voting for Americans with disabilities in the upcoming elections, visit the new voting resource page at the American Association of People with Disabilities.
