Voting Access Across the Country

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CARLY PACHECO, HOST: From KVMR and in partnership with FREED, this is Disability Rap.

LILIAN ALURI: When we think about who our country works best for, in general it’s going to work for the people who have the most say in our elections, who are able to get to the polls consistently.

PACHECO: Today, a look at voting access for people with disabilities across the country.

MICHELLE BISHOP: When you see things being proposed that would restrict access to the vote, that’s a lot of time and a lot of money that people are spending to try to stop you from voting. If your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t invest all that time and that money into trying to stop you. So why would you ever let them? That the only thing that that should tell you is that your vote is actually immensely powerful, and no one should be able to stop you from having your voice heard.

PACHECO: That’s all coming up right here on Disability Rap. Stay tuned!

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CARL SIGMOND, HOST: Welcome to Disability Rap. I’m Carl Sigmond with Carly Pacheco.

With the midterm elections five weeks away, we spend today’s show looking at voting access for people with disabilities across the country. People with disabilities make up one fifth of the US population, or roughly 66 million people, and yet only 17.7 million people with disabilities voted in this country in 2020. While that was a significant increase over 2016, we wanted to find out what some of the main barriers are that people with disabilities face when trying to exercise our right to vote. We’ll look right here in California and also look at Texas and Wisconsin, where recent laws and court orders have restricted access to the ballot box for voters with disabilities.

PACHECO: To start us off, we hear from Lilian Aluri, REV UP Voting Campaign Coordinator at the American Association of People with Disabilities.

ALURI: The last two years of voting restrictions of attempts by 49 states, I think it was, to make changes to their voting laws to make it harder to vote, to me that says something really, it says something really upsetting about where our country is. And how there’s a significant number of people who have this mindset that only certain people deserve to vote, and that voting should be hard, you need to work hard to vote. And I think that that is so dangerous. And so it it’s where that like exclusive, that exclusivity, and that it’s just a part of this mindset and strategy to make sure that black and brown voters and disabled voters are not welcome with the polling place and in our elections. And when we think about who our country works best for, in general it’s going to work for the people who have the most say in our elections, who are able to get to the polls consistently. And if that’s not disabled voters and if that’s not voters of color, then you know, the people that are making these voting things restricted voting laws – they know who they want to be in the polling, but they know whose votes they want to count. And you know, it is very upsetting. It’s very upsetting to think about, kind of the ideology, the mindset behind all of these restrictive voting laws. You know definitely within the Voting Rights space within the disability community, there is really the opposite mentality. That you know if we are going to have a democracy that works for us, it needs to include us. And so you know, if we are going to have policies, and people that care about people disabilities, that are people with disabilities, that represent what you know our priorities, we’re going to need to be at the polls. And we’re also going to need to be candidates. And so that requires the opposite of making it harder to vote and adding additional restrictions.

PACHECO: That was Lilian Aluri, REV UP Voting Campaign Coordinator at the American Association of People with Disabilities. Here’s Michelle Bishop at the National Disability Rights Network.

BISHOP: We talk about some of the barriers that exist for people with disabilities to vote, which is important. We have to call out those barriers if we want to get them eliminated. But at some point in all of that we thought, aren’t we just going around telling everyone how hard it is to vote if you have a disability? Are we potentially discouraging people with disabilities from even participating in the process? So we decided to get much more active and also getting out the vote, in talking directly to people with disabilities about why our vote is so important. And why even if there are barriers, you have to be willing to plow straight through them, and make sure you get to cast your ballot.

A black woman with a disability talking about police violence and racial profiling being the most important to issue to her, because I am pretty sure it should be, as a black woman in 2020, right? Because people with disabilities, we’re not just our disability, right? We’re full people, and the issues that matter to everyone else matter to us, too. So it’s actually been really exciting, and really fascinating to really just dig into our community and find out what it is that motivates people to get to the polls. Because those barriers, for the foreseeable future unfortunately are going to be there. You’ve just got to know that your vote is more important than that. And we’re really trying to drive people with disabilities to see how much votes matter, and how much the outcome of our elections really matters to our everyday lives.

PACHECO: So, we wanted to find out what some of these barriers are. Our first stop on this journey is Texas, where in 2021, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 1, and Governor Greg Abbott signed it into law. Among other things, Senate Bill 1 severely limited the types of assistance disabled voters in Texas could receive when voting. Here’s Molly Broadway of the advocacy group Disability Rights Texas.

MOLLY BROADWAY: In Texas you can, you are eligible for assistance if a disability or a health condition impedes your ability to produce your vote. So when you do in-person voting there are several different types of assistance and accommodations one can receive. One of them is just having an assistant to help you. They can mark the ballot for you as long as it’s reflecting of what you want to do as a voter. What’s changed this year is now there is an assistant oath that one must take when they are helping someone vote in person and via mail-in ballot. But this oath is basically saying that you are who you say you are, you can assist a person by voting by, you know, reading the ballot to them, marking the ballot the way they want, and things like that. What you cannot do is like visually cue or verbally cue somebody. And then there’s also a statement saying that you have not been compensated for doing this in any way. And that if you’re lying you can be guilty via perjury.

We have a lot of concerns: A) we feel like it’s going to intimidate people to assist voters, because you have this over the overshadowing perjury consequence, if you have been perceived as doing something anti the oath that you signed. There’s trouble in trying to motivate people to do that. You’re putting your life on the line, basically, to help someone practice their civil right. And the other part of it was we had concerns about people who have personal attendants or caregivers that are paid to do this job, and part of the job, you know, is doing your day-to-day tasks, which involves voting.

PACHECO: This summer, a federal judge struck down the provisions of Senate Bill 1 that limited the assistance people can receive while voting in Texas. We actually saw a similar legal battle play out in Wisconsin this summer when a state court there found that only a voter, and not anyone else, can place the voter’s absentee ballot in a mailbox or ballot drop box or return it in person to their county’s elections clerk. Barbara Beckert of Disability Rights Wisconsin explains.

BARBARA BECKERT: This had a disproportionate impact on a lot of people with disabilities. First of all, so many voters with disabilities do vote absentee, because of barriers to voting in person. But in addition to that there are a lot of people who, because of the nature of their disability, it might be impossible for them to place a ballot in a mailbox.

BILL CROWLEY: So I use a power wheelchair, I’m a quadriplegic with a spinal cord injury.

PACHECO: That’s Bill Crowley, a supervising attorney at Disability Rights Wisconsin. He says that he votes in almost every election. Before the pandemic, he says that he would vote in person at his local polling place.

CROWLEY: Once I get into the voting area, there are accessible voting machines for me and others to use if we need.

PACHECO: That all changed for Bill Crowley since the Covid-19 pandemic.

CROWLEY: You know since the pandemic with obviously the heightened risk to people with pre-existing conditions and vulnerabilities, I’ve definitely shifted more towards voting absentee.

PACHECO: But for Bill Crowley and many other people with physical disabilities in Wisconsin, it is impossible to fill out an absentee ballot without assistance or place it in a mailbox or ballot drop box themselves. So, a group of four disabled voters in Wisconsin sued the state in federal court, asserting that they have a right to assistance when returning absentee ballots, and in August, U.S. District Judge James Peterson agreed. Here’s Beckert reading the judge’s ruling.

BECKERT: “Wisconsin voters who require assistance with mailing or delivering their absentee ballots to the municipal clerk because of a disability, must be permitted to receive such assistance by a person of the voter’s choice.”

PACHECO: The ruling comes as a relief to Bill Crowley, who says he voted in person in Wisconsin’s August primary despite concerns for his health.

CROWLEY: Now that we definitely have the clarification from the federal judge that you can have assistance mailing your ballot, I intend to vote that way this November.

PACHECO: Here’s Michelle Bishop at the National Disability Rights Network again.

BISHOP: 2020 really highlighted how important that right to the assistant of your choice is. Which is protected by federal law, that’s actually in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That if you have limited insufficiency or you’re a person with a disability, you have the right to the assistant of your choice. It’s something that was really put in place because we haven’t really made elections fully accessible yet. So it’s one of those things it’s almost like a consolation prize, right? Until we can make voting completely private and independent, we’ll let you have the assistant of your choice. And we’ve seen some attacks on that right to voter assistance, and that’s something that states just can’t do. It’s a federally protected right and they really don’t get to limit it.

PACHECO: As Michelle Bishop notes, voting by mail will never be accessible to all people with disabilities.

BISHOP: The importance of vote by mail, the thing that really matters is that it’s always been inaccessible to people with disabilities. Which is a violation of federal law, it’s required by the Americans with Disabilities Act to be accessible. But traditionally we mail someone – it’s exactly what it sounds like, it’s voting by mail. We mail you a piece of paper, you have to be able to read that and mark that, and handle that paper, and then return it by mail. And that’s never been fully accessible. That will never be fully accessible. And the pandemic really highlighted that because all of a sudden when everyone was trying to stay home and they wanted to socially distance, way more people suddenly wanted to vote by mail.

PACHECO: Here’s Lilian Aluri at the American Association of People with Disabilities again.

ALURI: You know when we talk about how the pandemic changed everything, people with disabilities tend to have much much higher risks of getting seriously ill or dying from Covid-19. We’ve seen this from the very beginning of the pandemic, how it has impacted people living in congregate settings, many of whom are people with disabilities. We continue to see how COVID is impacting people who are immunocompromised in in many different ways. And so as our country has kind of begun to say that we’re putting the pandemic behind us, many of us are still having to be very careful. It’s beginning to make public places less and less safe as more and more people are not taking the same precautions that we’ve taken towards the beginning of the pandemic. And so in 2020, especially as the information that we were getting about the pandemic was changing sometimes day to day, it was difficult to know, even to know for yourself, what is the risk I’m going to take on if I go and vote in person? And so that’s one of the reasons why being able to vote from where you live was so important.

PACHECO: So, over the course of the pandemic, California and several other states have moved to make voting by mail more accessible to people with disabilities. California rolled out a system called Remote Accessible Vote-By-Mail or RAVBM. Gabe Taylor of Disability Rights California explains how the system works.

GABE TAYLOR: It is an option where folks can register through a link on the County elections website. And it allows people to type in their registered voting information and then it gives somebody a link to be able to open up their specific ballot on their home computer. And it allows them to complete the ballot, make selections, navigate through the ballot using assistive technology. If they use assistive technology through their own home computers, it allows a voter to be able to utilize that to complete their ballot. And then you are able to print out the selections, once you’ve completed the ballot. And then the counties provide the prepaid stamped envelope that you can then slide your ballot into, and seal it up, and then sign it and return it. It was a way to kind of provide an option for folks who may not be able to do a hard copy vote by mail ballot.

A big issue for a number of voters is that they are not able to complete the last steps in that process. Oftentimes people run up against the hurdle of not even having access to a printer so that’s a huge huge barrier.

PACHECO: And even if you do have a printer, if you have limited dexterity or you are blind or low vision, you might still need assistance with putting the ballot you just printed in an envelope, signing it, and returning it to the elections office. So advocates in California worked to move a bill through the state legislature here that would have allowed voters with certain disabilities to mark their ballot online *and* return their ballot through a secure web portal. Thirteen states have some type of electronic ballot return option for voters with disabilities. That’s compared to 33 states that allow military and overseas voters to return their ballots electronically. The advocates we spoke with for this story question why, if the technology exists and military and overseas voters can return their ballots electronically, why this option is not available to people with disabilities in more states. Here’s Gabe Taylor again.

TAYLOR: The security measures have been carefully thought out. The security measures would be in place. The same verification process would be in place. For voters with particular disabilities, this option would provide them a very ‘unique’, for lack of a better word, experience that they may have never had before. To be able to go through the entire voting process and not have to depend on someone else to help them make their voice heard.

PACHECO: SB 1480 would have allowed electronic ballot return for people with certain disabilities in California, but the bill died in the state legislature after the Secretary of State unexpectedly came out in opposition to the bill this summer. Advocates in California tell us that they are still hopeful that people with disabilities in this state will someday be able to mark and return their ballots privately and independently from the comfort of their own homes. Here’s Gabe Taylor.

TAYLOR: People with disabilities definitely have a right to a private and independent voting experience. That is sort of the focus of the work that we do at Disability Rights California, is trying to work with counties to figure out ways of how to get to that goal. And not just with one particular voting option. I mean our goal is to make all the voting options that they provide any voter get as close as we possibly can to that overarching goal.

PACHECO: Back in Texas, disability advocates are also concerned about some provisions of Senate Bill 1 that make it more difficult to vote by mail. Here’s Molly Broadway again.

BROADWAY: What has changed, if you had voted for previous years in as a via mail-in ballot, your County elections office could kind of just send you an application proactively, and that’s not the case anymore. So people who may just be assuming to get an application in the mail are going to be disappointed. So they need to be aware that they need to proactively ask for that.

The other part of it is the application was now asking for a form of identification. And it had to be either your Texas driver’s license, your Texas identification card, or your Texas election identification certificate, or the last four digits of your Social Security card. But it couldn’t just be any of those, if you knew the numbers off the top of your head. It had to be the identification number that you used when you first registered to vote. Which for some of us is a longer leap into the past than others. The elections office of your county cannot just hand out this information over the telephone. This was all happening around the time of primaries, and so the Secretary of State’s office has come down with guidance saying, you know what, instead of just entering one of the two numbers you can now enter both forms of numbers, so that was kind of a win.

PACHECO: Another challenge that the advocates we spoke to for this story point to is access to reliable accessible transportation to get to and from the polls. Here’s Lilian Aluri at the American Association of People with Disabilities again.

ALURI: In most cities, in most areas across the country, accessible transportation is hard to access. You have to request it far in advance. It can be unreliable. And it can just be a very difficult system to use. And so when it comes to getting to where you need to go, you know, many people with disabilities don’t drive. And without access to reliable and accessible transportation, it’s difficult to plan your vote and get to a polling place. Even, you know, we think about the long lines at polling places. It could be a nightmare to try to get yourself transportation to and from a polling location, especially when you don’t know how long it’s going to take you to vote.

PACHECO: Bill Crowley from Disability Rights Wisconsin elaborates.

CROWLEY: For I think many people with mobility issues, getting to a polling site is a journey in itself sometimes. You know what if you need transportation to get there, or you know, how the sidewalk that’s around the polling area is, or if there’s useful curb cuts. And then just navigating the building itself once you to get there. I know the polling place that is mine, the one that I vote at, the voting area is up a flight of stairs. So it requires an elevator to get up there to the voting area. Due to all the, you know, uncertainty over if having assistance would be considered illegal to mail my absentee ballot, I did the elect to vote in person. Just because I wanted to avoid any potential consequences, particularly in this current environment that we are in politically, where things are very charged around the voting, and who can vote and whatnot. So I did go vote in person. But at a time of day when I thought the polling place would be less busy, so you know, a few people and less risk.

However, when I did go I ran into a different barrier. The elevator that I would use to get to the actual voting area was out of order. About half an hour before I had gotten there, a different voter in a wheelchair was using that elevator, then it broke and she was actually stuck in between floors for a time. That definitely ruled out me getting to the voting area via the elevator. Fortunately these staff, the polling staff, at this location were very helpful, very apologetic. So we worked out a solution that allowed me to vote like in a different area of the building and still have my ballot counted.

PACHECO: The advocates we spoke to for this story point to the fact that elections in this country are administered at the state level, rather than by the Federal government. Here’s Michelle Bishop at the National Disability Rights Network again.

BISHOP: I think we ultimately need to accept the federal government being a little more involved in elections. I think that the fact that the system is so decentralized is part of its beauty, and also one of its greatest flaws at the same time. And I think some of the most important protections that we have for voters came from the federal level. If this fight is at the state level, it’s like whether or not you get to cast your ballot just depends on your address. It just depends on where you live. You could potentially live – you know I used to live near a state line, I actually still live near a state line, what am I talking about? You know, if I live two miles away from my current home the rules could be completely different for me. My options could be completely different. And to me that just doesn’t make any sense.

TAYLOR: One thing that I think we’ve always, or I’ve always advocated for, is being a more visible presence. If you’re a person with a disability, get involved. I’m always encouraging folks to sign up to be poll workers or vote center workers. Or do collaborative presentations with County election staff in whatever County you live in. I’m always sort of encouraging that increased involvement wherever you can find it. Because the more folks are aware of people who have particular accessibility needs, or just navigate their daily life a little bit differently, you start picking up things, you start observing things. And so you start noticing like accessibility needs before someone even mentions them.

ALURI: If we are going to have a democracy that works for us it needs to include us. And so, you know, if we are going to have policies and people that care about people with disabilities, that are people with disabilities, that represent what, you know, our priorities, we’re going to need to be at the polls and we’re also going to need to be candidates. And so that requires the opposite of making it harder to vote and adding additional restrictions. And you know these changes are not necessarily new, and the voting barriers disabled voters have faced, you know, are also not new. But it’s just been a particularly specific wave in the last couple of years.

BISHOP: I do think the moral Arc of the universe is bending towards justice in the long term, even though this is kind of a chaotic time. And you know, make sure you cast your ballot and make sure your voice is heard. When you see things being proposed that would restrict access to the vote, that’s a lot of time and a lot of money that people are spending to try to stop you from voting. If your vote didn’t matter they wouldn’t invest all that time and that money into trying to stop you. So why would you ever let them? The only thing that that should tell you is that your vote is actually immensely powerful, and no one should be able to stop you from having your voice heard. So I hope that when people see these kinds of things going on, don’t be discouraged. Let it light that fire in you to have your voice heard, that’s what the entire basis of our government.

PACHECO: That was Michelle Bishop at the National Disability Rights Network. Before that, you heard Lilian Aluri at the American Association of People with Disabilities and Gabe Taylor at Disability Rights California.

And that does it for this show. Disability Rap is produced and edited by Carl Sigmond. Courtney Williams is our Production Assistant. We have a new website, disabilityrap.org. There, you can listen to past shows, read transcripts, and subscribe to the Disability Rap podcast. You can also subscribe to our podcast by searching Disability Rap on any of the major podcast platforms. We are brought to you by KVMR in partnership with FREED, and we’re distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. I’m Carly Pacheco with Carl Sigmond for another edition of Disability Rap.