Voters Sue 3 Alabama Counties for Failure to Provide Accessible Absentee Voting Methods

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LINDSEY WELLS, HOST: From KVMR and in partnership with FREED, this is Disability Rap.

ERIC PEEBLES: The vote is the one thing that doesn’t identify me as citizen with a disability, as a male, as a white man, as anything. Your vote is blind.

WELLS: Today, Alabama voters on their lawsuit to make voting more accessible in that state.

BILL VAN DER POL: Alabama has a history. Missouri may be called, “The Show Me State.” Alabama would probably be better named, “The Make Me Do It State.” And so, we, from time to time, have to file these lawsuits to get Alabama to follow the law.

WELLS: That’s all coming up on Disability Rap, stay tuned!

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

WELLS: Today we turn to Alabama where people with disabilities are suing three counties in that state for failure to provide an absentee voting option that is fully accessible for blind voters and other voters with disabilities. The lawsuit filed earlier this month by four individuals and the National Federation of the Blind of Alabama alleges that the counties are violating the rights of blind voters and other voters with disabilities by failing to provide them with accessible means to mark and return their absentee ballots.

Under federal law, all in-person voting locations must have at least one accessible voting machine but as we've covered on Disability Rap before, absentee voting, sometimes called voting by mail isn't always accessible for all people with disabilities in all states. For more on all this, we're joined by two guests. Dr. Eric Peebles is one of the named plaintiffs in this Alabama lawsuit.

He currently serves as executive director of Accessible Alabama, an organization that works to increase accessible housing options in communities for people with disabilities and those facing growing limitations as they age. He has a PhD in rehabilitation from Auburn University. Eric has spastic cerebral palsy because of an oxygen deprivation during birth. This trauma has severely limited his motor skills to the point of functional quadriplegia.

Also, with us is Bill Van Der Pol, senior trial counsel at the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program. Bill is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the absentee voting lawsuit.

SIGMOND: Well, Eric Peebles and Bill Van Der Pol, welcome to Disability Rap. It’s great to have both of you with us. Eric, I want to begin with you. Can you just set a stage for us and explain why an absentee ballot is not accessible for you and other people with what we call “print disabilities.”

PEEBLES: Yes. Thank you for having us, by the way. One of the biggest barriers for me as an individual is because of my mobility impairment, I have type of print disability because number one, my lack of muscle control in my head and my neck because it is difficult for me to track a line. And because of my functional quadriplegia, I also have difficulty manipulating pages of the book or pieces of paper or things like that.

Even the in-person voting process in Alabama, or at least in the counties where I've lived is difficult for me because while we had the express vote machines that allow you to vote through touch screen, you're still required to take a paper slip and put it into the optical scanner when you're done, and/or if you can't reach the screen from your mobility device, the sanctity of your vote is violated because you're getting assistance from a proctor or whoever you bring with you.

They have from the absentee process, which is something we all got very used to in Alabama as during the 2020 election cycle because of the pandemic. In order to cast an absentee ballot in the state of Alabama, and this is statewide, not county specific, an individual must have a signature of two simultaneous witnesses on your absentee ballot application and/or have it notarized by a notary public who has a commissioning in the state.

For someone that lives independently like us, it is very cumbersome to even get one care aid, there at in your presence at a time in order to witness an absentee ballot versus much less two people that had to be there simultaneously. And if I was to do that with my HCBS waiver funded staff, I would also be in violation of state Medicaid law and state and CMS regulations by having two aides working at the same time, which is outside of the realm of the care plan.

To bring the paper absentee ballot system as currently set up in Alabama is very cumbersome for people with physical disabilities and print disabilities. This means that an individual with a print manipulation disability like I've got, has to manage paper ballots and possibly risk dropping it on the floor, running it over with a 300-pound wheelchair.

Our solution is to let people with disabilities and frankly, all those who wish to participate in the absentee voting process, to cast their vote using a similar internet-based system that our US servicemen and women who are residents of the Alabama, also, are free to take advantage of today. We're not asking the state to reinvent the wheel. The infrastructure is already in place here, just asking for this to be an option that is available to people that need it in order to achieve equal access to the poll.

SIGMOND: Great. Thank you, Eric. And I just want to explain for our listeners a bit more about what you’re talking about. You’re referring to Remote Accessible Vote By Mail, or RAVBM, which, I want to be clear up front, it is not internet voting. But what it is, is it is an online system where voters can receive and mark their ballots using a computer, maybe with assistive technology. And then print and return their ballot by mail or at a drop-off location. So, Eric, can you say a bit more about what you’re calling for with RAVBM, and then we’ll pull Bill in here as well.

PEEBLES: You’re exactly right, Carl, what we're talking about is the ability for an individual to receive a secure link from their county election manager, be able to complete their ballot on the computer, and then be able to print it out. The advantages to this approach are many for the individual with a disability. One of the things that I always tell my council when we're going over these types of cases is that the vote is the one thing that doesn't identify me as a citizen with a disability, as a male, as a white man, as anything.

Your vote is blind, and the only way that the sanctity of that vote is not violated is if I'm able to cast that vote independently in the privacy of my own home or office or whatever I choose because even regular in-person voting requires, in my case, that I have my driver or the poll worker physically fill out the paper ballot based on my direction, and the way our voting system is set up set, it's precinct-based like everybody else.

My neighbors, the people I go to church with, somebody that may shop at the grocery store down the street that I go to, is voting at the same polling place, and could be voting at the same time and overhear me expressing my political views. When you live in a deep red state, like Alabama, and your views are not necessarily anything but deep red, you really don't want your neighbors knowing what your political persuasions are. If they know you well they'll figure it out anyway, but still, you don't want to offer them low-hanging fruit.

SIGMOND: Before we bring Bill in, I just want to clarify that here in California, we do have RAVBM available to any voter with a disability in any county.

WELLS: Thank you, Eric and Carl. Bill, I want to bring you in here. As an advocate and activist in the disability community, I know that taking someone to court isn't the first move. I imagine that there was a lot leading up to filing this suit against these three counties. Bill, can you talk about the advocacy in Alabama, and how you got to the point of taking this to court?

VAN DER POL: Voting I think is one of our most important rights, it's probably the only time in the world that I'm going to be on the same level as Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, or anyone else like that. I get one vote, they get one vote. I've been an attorney now for almost 40 years, it'll be 40 years next year, and you're right. We have far more things that we could sue people over at our agency than we have the manpower to do, so we have to find those things that are the most offensive and are not able to be resolved.

In a way, Alabama has a history of simply not following the law or wanting to work in a way to ensure that everyone is treated equally. You need to look no further than the Milliken case out of the southern part of the state where the Supreme Court ordered the state of Alabama to create a second opportunity district for Black voters and instead of doing that the legislature basically thumbed their nose at the Supreme Court and did not do that, to the chagrin of the three-judge panel who was very miffed about that.

Alabama has history. Missouri may be called the show-me state, Alabama probably would be better named the make-me-do-it state. We from time to time have to file these lawsuits to get Alabama to follow the law.

WELLS: And then Bill, can you just put your lawsuit into a broader national context? Last year, we did a show on Disability Rap on the state of voting access for people with disabilities nationwide. We mentioned that RAVBM is available for voters with disabilities here in California, but it's not available in every state, and clearly not available in the three counties you're suing in Alabama. Where are we on a national level in terms of voting access and what are you calling for?

VAN DER POL: To make it a little clearer, how one votes in Alabama, we use only paper ballots and it's like what we used back in college days or high school days where you have to fill in the little bubble with a black number two pencil. For someone who is blind or someone like Eric who has mobility issues, that's simply not a realistic or possible alternative, so that the only way those individuals can vote is to tell someone else how they wish to vote, disclose their sacred and secret right to cast a vote for whoever they wish to do so.

As Eric said, we're not asking for something that is like new technology. There's a federal statute called UCAVA, Uniformed--I can't remember exactly what all the letters stand for. It's essentially for individuals who live, are citizens, and live outside of the United States or our military that have this exact right. The exact right we're asking for, which is electronic access to a ballot and an electronic marking, electronic return. Alabama has this system.

All we're asking for them is to make this system available to the rest of Alabamians. This is not rocket science. Now in terms of where we stand nationwide, about 15 states have this sort of system where they've come along. They're not all blue states, they're mostly blue states, but there are states like West Virginia, and Ohio, that are not generally considered the deep blue states that I think have chosen to do the right thing, which is to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to vote.

I'd rather you have an opportunity to vote and vote for someone, the different person than I voted for, than you not have that right to vote or you be excluded of that right to vote. Everyone should have that chance. I've always said that you shouldn't be allowed to complain unless you voted.

One of the things that we try to do in people first to get Alabama to accommodate people with disabilities so that they could vote safely was curbside voting. Curbside voting was not illegal in Alabama.

The only person who was trying to make curbside voting illegal was the Secretary of State who ordered those counties to stop doing it and then immediately thereafter, instead of expanding the rights to people to vote in Alabama, the legislature codified the fact that curbside voting is illegal. They did exactly the opposite of what you would hope an entity would do if they were actually interested in having more people vote or making it more inclusively available for people to vote. They did exactly the opposite by going and explicitly passing the statute making curbside voting illegal.

WELLS: Thank you, Bill. Eric, what advice do you have for people across the country waiting to expand voting access for people with disabilities?

PEEBLES: Really, just keep going, get involved. To borrow a phrase from the father of the ADA, Justin Dart, get involved with politics and get involved with voting as if your life depended on it, because it does. The vote as I said earlier, is, and Bill echoed to the point where this is the only time that he is on a level playing field with Elon Musk and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and whoever.

This is the only time that I am not labeled as a white college-educated male with a disability. My vote is just as good as the kid that just turned 18 and hasn't yet graduated from high school. My vote is just as good as the 99-year-old lady that has been voting in every election since Harry Truman. When your county election supervisors are counting those ballots, they can't feel the difference between mine and the young kid or the senior citizen.

Just keep fighting, don't become disenfranchised just because the process is too difficult. Do what it is you have to do. Just like they say, when NBC News and the other groups say make your vote, make a precinct plan, make a voting plan, that's all the more important for folks with disabilities who rely on supports, whether that be public transit, or a caregiver, or a friend or neighbor to help them participate in the voting process.

Think through that plan. Think through what's it going to take for you to apply for the absentee ballot or what's it going to take for you to participate in the process on election day. As it states in the complaint, the only reason I didn't vote in the 2022 midterm was because the county election board had changed my polling place and I didn't get the-- or my apartment complex didn't get the update when they did their new tenant literature.

I went around to two different places where I didn't end up voting because I was worried because the Independent Living Center of Mobile was also a polling place. I didn't want to leave the facility unattended without staff, or I was exercising my rights to citizenship. Those are the sacrifices that those of us that are strong disability advocates in this space have to make when it comes to how their vote and how their participation can be most effective and do the most good for the greatest number of citizens.

SIGMOND: As we wrap up, Bill, talking to a national audience of disability advocates, what should we be doing in the months and years to come?

VAN DER POL: People with disabilities traditionally are relatively low-outcome voters. You need to think about a difference in 513 votes in the state of Florida would have changed who the President was. There have been numerous occasions where one or two votes would've changed who your Congressman was. It is imperative if you want to be heard, this is one of your best opportunities to do so and do not ever give up that right. And there will be people like me and others in this who will always be here willing to help and fight for your right to express your opinion and your vote.

WELLS: That was Bill Van Der Pol, Senior Trial Counsel at the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program. We also spoke with Dr. Eric Peebles, Executive Director of Accessible Alabama.  

And that does it for the show. We have an announcement, especially for our KVMR listeners. Disability Rap has been airing on the first Monday of the month at 6:30 p.m.. Starting in November, we’ll be airing Disability Rap on the second Wednesday of the month at 6:30 p.m.. So again, we’re shifting when we air Disability Rap on KVMR from the first Monday of the month to the second Wednesday of the month, still at 6:30 p.m.. For our podcast listeners, new episodes will now drop on the second Wednesday of each month around 7 p.m. Pacific Time here in the United States. 

You can always go to our website, disabilityrap.org, to 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. Special thanks to our Production Assistant, Courtney Williams. I’m Lindsey Wells with Carl Sigmond for another edition of Disability Rap.