Throughout this election, pundits and analysts have wondered
whether identity groups like millennials, women, Latinos might come out to vote.
But what about a group of Americans who desperately want to vote — but often can’t?
I’m talking about Americans living with disabilities.
Voting is a pain in the butt.
That’s Victor Pineda,
an award-winning scholar and disability rights activist.
Victor was able to vote in 2008, but not without great difficulty.
Because he uses a wheelchair, Victor had to wait
for 30 minutes outside a fraternity
while poll workers scrambled to find an accessible voting booth.
The solution that poll workers ultimately came up with
was to have Victor forgo his privacy rights
and vote from the sidewalk.
Yes, I voted, but it did not make me feel like I was voting privately,
nor with dignity, when I was trying to express myself
like everybody else.
Each one of us wants to feel like we belong.
And having to have this sort of cumbersome process —
it just makes you feel like you’re an afterthought.
But Victor’s story is not an isolated incident.
According to a 2013 study by Rutgers University,
a third of the estimated 35 million American voters
with disabilities
say that they experienced some trouble voting in the
2012 election.
The same study found that almost half of polling places
examined had accessible voting systems that
weren’t easy to navigate for voters with a disability.
In the time that I spent with these voters, I found
it extremely difficult to even find one person
that didn’t have an embarrassing story about a voting experience.
But this time I had trouble voting because there was only one wheelchair-accessible booth.
They moved it to a gas station.
It was really very precarious for somebody in a wheelchair.
And these stories aren’t just anecdotal.
According to UC Davis researcher Mindy Romero,
people with disabilities tend to have lower voter
turnout rates,
partly because of these barriers to access that
other Americans take for granted.
Voters with disabilities, it’s a population that is very
determined to be seen and be represented,
but they do have lower turnout levels.
Issues with voting range from:
difficulty in reading the ballot,
difficulty in knowing where the polling site was.
We talked to a couple of people that had experiences, they were blind,
they walked into the polling site, and they were told
there wasn’t a machine.
And what’s most shocking is not only the frequency
at which these problems occur,
but how easily preventable they are.
And we aren’t talking about a major overhaul of the
entire voting system.
We’re talking about small fixes, like training staff to
use a machine
or ensuring that there are ramps on site.
And the Rutgers study shows that if Americans with disabilities
voted at the same rate as non-disabled Americans,
there could be 3 million extra people voting.
That’s an amount that has the power to swing an election.
And compounding this problem with access is isolation.
People with disabilities are more likely to be isolated,
and this makes navigating the voting process even harder.
There’s a lot of people who have disabilities who
don’t have relationships,
they don’t have transportation, they don’t have employment.
I think voting is very complicated.
A lot of people, even professionals, are overwhelmed by voting.
So people that the education level is not as high
might have problems with voting as well.
We need help with transportation because in LA
we’re the road rage capital of the United States.
And although voting by mail seems like the solution to all these ills,
it doesn’t solve the biggest problem facing people
with disabilities,
which is invisibility.
I’ve voted in every presidential election and primary
since I was 18, and I’m 51 now.
I have a disability and I have rights and I’m part
of the community like everybody else.
So I like to exercise my right to vote.
For me, it was important that they saw me.
It’s really important that people with disabilities come out.
And it’s not just physical barriers that prevent people with
disabilities from exercising their right to vote.
For instance, David Rector used to be a producer at NPR
and, after suffering a brain injury, lost his ability to vote
because he was assigned a guardian.
He is fighting for his right to vote despite being well informed and desperate to vote
in what has become a high-stakes election, to say the least.
And of course, the voting system being ill-prepared for people with disabilities
is a larger metaphor for the priorities of a political
system that fails to prioritize
the needs of disabled Americans.
Despite the fact that they make up 20% of the population.
And our media has been a culprit too.
When Hillary Clinton made a push to appeal to disabled voters,
the Washington Post labeled the effort as “unusual.”
So what’s the solution to this problem?
We need to see people with disabilities, but actually see them.
And in order to do that, we need to adapt our world
to make that inevitable.
We need to build environments with people with disabilities in mind
and adapt public spaces to them, not the other way around.
I’d actually challenge you to say that we’re not a minority.
We’re actually part of every single community that exists.
And what probably is holding us back is the stigma
that is associated with disability.
Most people look at it as a problem to fix or something tragic or a burden,
when really it’s just a normal, natural part of life.
Voting is the bedrock of democracy.
Americans have fought tooth and nail for the rights
of African Americans and women to vote.
There’s no reason why Americans who are differently abled
should be left out of exercising that same fundamental right.
During a pivotal election where both candidates have such contrasting positions
on people with disabilities,
feels like a good time to ensure that they all get a say
in who gets the keys to the White House.