Disability and election administration in the United States: barriers and improvements (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reducing Obstacles to Voting for People with Disabilities
2013
The Presidential Commission on Election Administration’s mission includes identifying best practices and making recommendations to promote voting accessibility and improve the experiences of voters with disabilities. This White Paper reviews the evidence on voter turnout and voting difficulties among people with disabilities, and identifies best practices for removing obstacles that can limit their ability to exercise the right to vote.1 As will be seen, while progress has been made, significantly more needs to be done to make the election system fully accessible.
Patterns and Mechanisms of Political Participation among People with Disabilities
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 2019
Context: Previous research has shown that Americans with disabilities turn out to vote at significantly lower levels than people without disabilities, even after accounting for demographic and other situational factors related to political involvement. The authors examined the potential mechanisms underlying their low turnout. They asked whether people with disabilities exhibit participatory attitudes and behaviors at levels commensurate with their other individual-level characteristics. Methods: The present study conducted descriptive and predictive analyses on data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies. Findings: Despite low levels of turnout in recent elections, people with disabilities were just as participatory, if not more so, when considering alternative forms of political engagement. Our analyses indicate that, while disability status had no bearing on political efficacy or partisan strength, those with disabilities reported being even more interested in politics than those without disabilities. Evidence is provided that depressed turnout rates among those with disabilities may be due in part to lower levels of attentiveness to the news, political knowledge, and negative perceptions of government. Conclusions: The psychological impacts and behavioral consequences that emerge from possessing a disability and the broader role of disability in the American political context are multifaceted. This area of research would benefit from future studies which examine a variety of electoral contexts.
Barriers to Voting for Disabled Americans
Journal of Student Research
Disabled Americans face many barriers when it comes to voting, which is reflected in their lower voter turnout. This article examines past barriers along with the changes in accessibility that occurred due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Physical barriers include inaccessibility at polling locations, such as a lack of ramps and audio-equipped voting machines. A lack of privacy for disabled voters also dissuades them from voting. Disabled people have also been psychologically discouraged from voting by both consistent inaccessibility and the lack of government attention to this inaccessibility. Further, disabled people who are considered high-risk for COVID-19 were less likely to vote in person due to concerns about contracting the virus. However, the widespread availability of mail-in ballots increased disabled voter turnout as compared to previous years. This did not close the turnout gap between disabled and abled voters, but did shrink it. In order to address the barrier...
Contemporary Voting Rights Controversies Through the Lens of Disability
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
People with disabilities are the ticking time bomb of the electorate. An estimated thirty to thirty-five percent of all voters in the next twenty-five years will need some form of accommodation. Despite the significant and growing population of voters with disabilities, they do not vote in proportion to their numbers. We can consider voters with disabilities as "the canaries in the coal mine," the people who are an advanced warning of the structural difficulties in voting not just for themselves, but also for the system as a whole. Solving problems in voting for people with disabilities will strengthen the entire system and will help improve the voting process for everyone, especially people from disempowered communities. Furthermore, although election law scholars have largely ignored the unique voting problems confronting voters with disabilities, virtually every major voting controversy in contemporary American electoral politics directly implicates issues of disability.
Designing Accessible Elections: Recommendations from Disability Voting Rights Advocates
Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy, 2022
Disability is frequently cited as a reason that Americans do not vote. This article offers legal and policy practitioner perspectives on core challenges people with disabilities face in exercising their voting rights in the United States, from obtaining election information to casting their ballots. Drawing on our collective experience-which includes professional experience as advocates working to improve access to voting for people with disabilities, as well as first-hand knowledge of how people with disabilities navigate the voting process-we analyze some of the main reasons why barriers persist, despite robust federal accessibility mandates. In doing so, we provide insights into how local and state election officials can improve election policies, practices, and procedures. In presenting our recommendations, we suggest that there is no onestop, ''silver-bullet'' solution for achieving accessible elections. An effective pathway toward improvement would involve consulting with a broad spectrum of local residents with disabilities, maintaining close and ongoing dialogue with them about their needs and preferences, and tailoring election programs accordingly.
Facilitating an Equal Right to Vote for Persons with Disabilities
Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2014
Historically and contemporaneously, persons with disabilities have been excluded from exercising their human rights, including the right to political participation. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities responds to this circumstance and provides a holistic solution. Article 29 addresses the design and implementation of an electoral process that is non-discriminatory, while also requiring states to provide voters with disability-related accommodations and other facilitative measures to enable their equal right to vote. Yet to date, what little attention has been paid to the voting rights of disabled persons has focused on the validity and scope of exclusions, and neither courts nor legislators have turned to the positive side of the ledger, namely, how to enable individuals with disabilities to exercise their franchise. Emerging practices around the globe nonetheless bear out that persons with disabilities can be successfully incorporated in all phases of an electoral process. Further, they can perform a variety of roles beyond exercising the franchise-as voter educators, election commissioners, observers, monitors and committee members, and as candidates. The article reflects evolving state policies and practices by disabled people's organizations, and draws on our experience working in this field to provide guidance for disability inclusion throughout the ongoing process of pre-electoral, electoral and post-electoral phases that comprise the electoral cycle.
Social Science Quarterly, 2013
Objective. We examine whether people with disabilities are part of the political mainstream, or remain outsiders in important respects, by studying political participation and the underexplored topic of how disability relates to attitudes toward politics. Method. We analyze new disability measures on the 2008 and 2010 Current Population Surveys voting supplements, and two other nationally representative surveys for 2006 and 2007. Results. Citizens with disabilities remain less likely than nondisabled citizens to vote. While there are few differences in political preferences and party affiliations, people with disabilities tend to favor a greater government role in employment and healthcare, and give lower ratings on government responsiveness and trustworthiness. Conclusion. People with disabilities continue to be sidelined in important ways. Fully closing the disability gap would have led to 3.0 million more voters in 2008 and 3.2 million more voters in 2010, potentially affecting many races and subsequent public policies.
Ensuring the Enfranchisement of People With Disabilities
Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 2009
In a representational democracy, the process of selecting people to represent the electorate is critical. To accomplish this goal, it is crucial that elections be fair and accurate reflections of the decisions of the voters. However, a significant and relatively unacknowledged constituency, people with disabilities, faces a variety of barriers to full participation in the U.S. electoral democracy. Recent research has provided evidence that how people with disabilities vote is just as important as the physical barriers they face when casting their votes. This article presents an overview of the literature addressing issues that affect how people with disabilities vote, with an especial focus on the role of election officials as both facilitators and inhibitors of voting by people with disabilities.
Disability and Society , 2019
Online voting platforms have been introduced in some locations as the solution to the many barriers to political participation that disabled people continue to face. Reading the experiences of disabled student voters on university campuses alongside broader trends in electoral reform taking place in jurisdictions across Canada allows us to attend to the dangerous ways in which conversations around access have been limited through virtual solutions that encourage the physical absence of disabled voters. This article situates these absences alongside other categories of exclusion – including groups who are formally disenfranchised – and recalls many unstated values that are active in shaping citizenship cultures. Probing online voting through a critical disability angle, we present a critique of techno-fixes that builds upon broader notions of accessibility and inclusion.