Disability Power & Pride Publishes Guides to Disability Voting Rights in Swing States

You can find the guides here.

Waterstone on Voting Accessibility

Michael Waterstone has this interesting blog post on disability and voting.  An excerpt:

Although the situation has improved, there are still real concerns about the voting rights of people with disabilities in this election. In a 2000 Report, the General Accountancy Office found that 84 percent of polling places had at least one impediment that could deter persons with disabilities from casting their ballot. These barriers -- no ramps, lack of signage directing to an accessible entrance, an obstructed path to the polling place -- might seem trivial to voters without disabilities. But for people with disabilities, it can be the difference between voting and not voting. After increased litigation by advocates for people with disabilities, and passage of the Help America Vote Act, this situation has improved, but only somewhat. In a follow-up report examining the 2008 election, the GAO found that 73 percent of polling places had potential impediments to people with disabilities being able to access the voting areas, but 45 percent offered curbside voting. As I have argued elsewhere, curbside voting is a cheapened version of the voting experience. 

Recent reports indicate this problem has not gone away for this election cycle. In a recent case in New York, plaintiffs alleged that random samplings of New York City polling places revealed widespread inaccessibility, and that disability relevant criteria were not being used for polling place selection and that training for poll workers was inadequate to comply with the law. Plaintiffs prevailed on summary judgment establishing Defendant's liability (disclosure -- I was one of the expert witnesses in this case).

CNN Reports on Inaccessible Polling Places

See this story, which begins:

On Nov. 6, there's a very real possibility that many Americans with disabilities will not be able to vote because their local polling places will be inaccessible. 

Advocates for the disabled are worried that local governments aren't doing enough to prepare -- as are some of the small businesses that outfit polling sites with ramps.

Wheelchair User in Wisconsin Forced to Vote at Bottom of Stairs Without Secret Ballot

See this story, which begins:

A disabled Milwaukee retiree says she was deprived of her right to a secret ballot Tuesday, and it started with an inoperable wheelchair lift. 

"This particular situation is the most serious situation we've run across in the last few years," said Reid Magney, a spokesman with the Government Accountability Board. 

Marsha Valance, 66, said the handicapped lift at Juneau High School in Milwaukee was out of order when she arrived with her walker about 7:10 a.m. Tuesday. Because she couldn't get up the stairs, she called out for a poll worker. A worker subsequently carried her ballot downstairs to her without a sleeve and handed the ballot and a pencil to her. Leaning against her walker, she filled out the ballot at the bottom of the stairs just inside the door with no privacy. 

"I saw the poll worker reading it as he carried it back upstairs," Valance said in an interview Tuesday. "It's a matter of the right to vote a secret ballot. I got to vote, but it wasn't secret. I just think that's so outrageous."

Thanks to my friends at Bethesda Voices for the tip!

SDNY Rules for Plaintiffs in NYC Voting Access Case

See this article, which begins:

The city has failed to adequately provide for disabled voters at election polling places, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. 

U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts ruled in favor of two groups representing the disabled, the United Spinal Association and Disabled In Action. They had sued the city Board of Elections in 2010, saying the city was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act through "pervasive and persistent access barriers" at poll sites operated by the Board of Elections. 

The judge said the plaintiffs had provided copious documentation of barriers at poll sites, ranging from unsafe ramps to missing signage and improper placement of voting equipment and furniture.

Flint Agrees to Increase Accessibility at Polling Sites

See this article by that title in the Detroit Free Press.  It begins:

The City of Flint has agreed to make polling places more accessible for the mobility impaired in time for the November presidential election, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit announced today.

Acting on a complaint, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division conducted a study which showed a substantial number of Flint polling places were not accessible to people in wheelchairs.

The city recently signed a legal document pledging to make all of its polling places accessible to the mobility impaired head off a federal lawsuit. The agreement is designed to bring Flint into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Human Rights Watch on Disability Voting Rights in Peru

See this press release, with linked report.  The release begins:

Peru should remove significant barriers preventing people with disabilities from exercising their right to vote and other civil rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The failure to dismantle the obstacles is undermining Peru’s leadership as one of the first countries to ratify, in 2008, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

The 89-page report, “‘I Want to be a Citizen Just Like Any Other’: Barriers to Political Participation for People with Disabilities in Peru,” documents the legacy of a policy, changed only in October 2011, that arbitrarily denied people with sensory, intellectual, and psychosocial disabilities their right to vote, considering them legally incompetent to exercise such a decision. Human Rights Watch also examined the barriers that people with these and other disabilities face when exercising their political rights, including the difficulty of getting identity documents essential for voting, and the absence of support mechanisms to help people with disabilities make voting decisions. 

“Peruvians with disabilities are no-less citizens than anyone else,” said Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. “Everyone is equally entitled to vote and participate in society – and the law and government policy should see to it that they have the support they need and that no one is arbitrarily and unjustifiably excluded.” 

The report is based on interviews with more than 100 people with disabilities and their families, as well as with Peruvian government officials and disability advocates.

Oregon Tests iPads as Aid to Disabled Voters

See this story by that title in the New York Times.

Kohn on Voting Rights in Long-Term Care Institutions

New on SSRN: Nina A. Kohn, Preserving Voting Rights in Long-Term Care Institutions: Facilitating Resident Voting While Maintaining Election Integrity (McGeorge L. Rev., 2007). The abstract:

An individual's status as a resident of a long-term care facility has the potential to significantly limit his or her ability to vote. While the high rates of dementia among residents of long-term care facilities may lead some to conclude that such limitations are for the best, this article argues that individuals' access to the ballot and to assistance with ballot completion should not be limited by their institutional status. Specifically, it argues that long-term care facilities should be neither required nor permitted to play a "gate-keeping" role in the electoral process by screening residents for mental capacity to vote before permitting or facilitating access to the ballot. Nor, it argues, should electoral officials single out long-term care residents for such capacity testing. Rather, the article concludes that both states and long-term care facilities should consider themselves to have an affirmative duty to facilitate long-term care residents' participation in the electoral process. If policymakers are sufficiently concerned that excessively demented long-term care residents are voting, a phenomenon of which there is little evidence, they should create fair processes for disenfranchising voters that apply equally across residential settings.

VA Secretary Peake Urged to Stop Blocking Voter Registration

See this press release by that title. It begins:

Today, leading voting rights groups called on James B. Peake, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), to reverse a recent decision that prohibits VA offices and facilities from offering voter registration and potentially registering tens of thousands of veterans.

American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), Common Cause, Demos and the League of Women Voters urged Secretary Peake to approve future state requests to allow voter registration at VA agencies and offices. This would be a reversal of his ruling on a May 1, 2008, request by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen that he agree to the designation of VA sites in her state as voter registration agencies, as permitted under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz made a similar request on July 2, 2008.

"As a former secretary of state, I know how important it is for our veterans to be able to participate in our democracy," said Miles Rapoport, president of Demos and former Secretary ofState of Connecticut. "I urge James Peake to stop blocking voter registration by our vets."

The national voting rights groups - in conjunction with their grassroots state-based chapters around the country - also sent letters today to chief election officials in each state, calling on them to request that the VA agree to the designation of its offices
and facilities in their states as voter registration agencies.

"Designation of VA facilities as voter registration agencies is the single most important action that can be taken to help veterans participate in our nation's elections," said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause. "We will be working with state election officials to make this a reality."

Voting Accessibility Problems in Ireland

See this dispatch, which begins:

Voters with disabilities have complained about lack of access to a number of polling centres in today’s referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

It was claimed that about 30 voters could not vote at a polling station in south Dublin, because it did not have a wheelchair ramp available.

Fine Gael councillor Mary Mitchell O' Connor said it was “disgraceful” that voters with disabilities had been turned away from the polling station at Knox Hall, Monkstown.

"Many of the residents from Cheshire Homes were very upset when they could not vote. They did not see an advertisement which was placed in papers alerting them to the fact that Knox Hall was not wheelchair accessible.

“In fact I did not see this advertisement myself,” Ms Mitchell O’Connor said. Returning officer, County Sheriff John Fitzpatrick, later arranged for the Cheshire Home residents to vote elsewhere.

“Knox Hall or any other hall should not be used unless suitable ramps are provided for voters with disabled,” Ms Mitchell O'Connor said.

“The Government spent €50 million on electronic voting yet they are not able to provide simple ramps at polling stations Surely all voting stations should have wheelchair ramps.

Bradblog on Disability Rights Groups and Electronic Voting

Check out this post. An excerpt:

Voters with disabilities are finally beginning to speak out against the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, often known as "touch-screen") voting systems!

After years of DRE supporters, and indeed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, using the canard that blind and disabled voters must use DREs to vote privately and independently, a number of leaders in the disabilities community are speaking out against their having been used as a wedge to force the nationwide implementation of such disenfranchising, dangerous voting systems.

Two different landmark statements on the issue have now been released, The BRAD BLOG has learned. One statement [PDF] released last week by the Disability Law Center and the ACLU speaks in support of the decision by the Massachusetts Secretary of State to approve the use of ballot marking devices, as opposed to DREs, for use by the state's disabled voters.

The second, released today to The BRAD BLOG in advance of Congressional subcommittee hearings tomorrow, is signed so far by more than 20 leaders of the blind and disabled communities and calls for "an immediate ban" on DRE voting systems. Like the release from the Disability Law Center, the newly released statement crushes the long-overused myth that such unsecure, disenfranchising, failed technology is required for disabled access to private, independent voting. (The complete statement is posted at the end of this item.)

Post-Dispatch Editorial on Missouri Guardianship-Voting Case

My hometown paper today had this lead editorial on the guardianship-voting case I argued in the Eighth Circuit two weeks ago. Key grafs:

That's not good enough. Voting rights are not addressed routinely in probate proceedings, and state law does not require an assessment of an individual's capacity to vote in guardianship cases. Nor does the law allow judges any discretion when it comes to voting rights and full guardianship.

Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association and a leading expert on decisional competency, evaluated Mr. Scaletty and determined that he is competent to vote. Mr. Scaletty reads at least two newspapers a day. He has voted in local, state and national elections for many years. Both Mr. Scaletty's father and his social worker told Dr. Appelbaum that he holds strong opinions about political issues and has "a very good understanding of how elections work."

With so much at stake in both local and national elections, the state must not deprive anyone of the right to vote without substantial justification. Some of the people who are subject to the voting ban follow politics and have aligned themselves on particular sides of issues and with specific candidates and parties. Some have participated in political rallies and lobbied legislators on issues such as Medicaid cuts, which directly affect them.

Demos Report on Voting Accessibility

See this new report, entitled Improving Voter Access: A Report on the Technology for Accessible Voting Systems. The abstract:

Improving Voter Access is a new report by technology expert Noel Runyan, published by Demos and Voter Action, that finds that state voting systems are widely noncompliant with federal ADA and HAVA access requirements for voters with disabilities. Twenty percent of U.S. adults with disabilities -- more than 8 million eligible voters -- say they have been unable to vote in presidential or congressional elections due to barriers at or getting to the polls The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires that all polling places in elections for federal office anywhere in the United States have at least one voting system that shall be accessible for individuals with disabilities, including nonvisual accessibility for the blind and visually impaired, in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters But most currently deployed voting systems, including direct-recording electronic (DRE) systems, do not meet current HAVA and ADA disability accommodation requirements, and they are far from compliance with the new Voluntary Voting System Guidelines.They are not accessible for significant numbers of individuals with disabilities for a variety of reasons that can and should be directly addressed.

I'd be interested to hear the reaction of disability rights folks who have supported electronic voting.

Coverage of Missouri Guardianship-Voting Argument

See this AP dispatch. Excerpts:

Lawyers arguing a challenge to Missouri election law before a federal appeals court panel here disagreed Monday whether the state denies voting rights to some mentally ill people.

The lawyer for a mentally ill man in Kansas City said the Missouri Constitution and state law deny voting rights to Missourians assigned a guardian because of "mental incapacity."

Anti-discrimination law expert Samuel Bagenstos conceded that some counties have ordered individual assessments of those under guardianship to determine their competence to vote. But, he said, they have no authority, and are under no obligation to do so.

Bagenstos wants the court to declare what he calls the voting ban unconstitutional and in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Ultimately, he said, it's up to the Legislature to re-shape the law to allow for mentally ill people under guardianship to be assessed individually for voting competency.

* * *

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who's helping the appeals court this week, was one of three judges who heard the case and will decide its outcome. Her presence drew a packed courtroom.

Speaking from the bench, O'Connor referenced the majority opinion in a 2004 case, Tennessee v. Lane, which sided with paraplegics who claimed they were denied physical access to the state's courts, in violation of the ADA.

O'Connor asked Pritchett if he'd read the Lane decision, which addresses broader access to an individual's fundamental rights.

"I happened to join it," she said of the majority opinion. "I thought it covered voting."

And thanks, by the way, to Howard Bashman for the great PR.

Missouri Guardianship-Voting Argument

You can listen to my dulcet tones -- er., nasal hissing -- in today's Eighth Circuit argument here. I have no idea what the court will do, but the judges were incredibly well prepared and engaged with the case. We couldn't have asked for more.