Disabled Voters Fight For More Accessible Polling Places

Disabled Voters Fight For More Accessible Polling Places

Enlarge this image More than 35 million eligible voters in the U.S. - about one in six - have a disability. And in the last presidential election, almost a third of disabled voters reported having trouble casting their ballots - whether it was getting into the polling place, reading the ballot, or struggling with a machine.

npr.org

I can't remember if I've shared something similar to this before. My ex-husband is blind. During the primaries, the poll workers couldn't figure out how to get the one blind-accessible machine to work. My eleven-year-old filled out his ballot for him. The poll workers gave her an entire roll of "I voted" stickers.

Her father works with many disabled people of all sorts. A person in a wheelchair would have been able to get to our polling place without much difficulty, depending on the type of wheelchair. But a person with limited mobility or a person who has trouble walking distances (me) or who uses a walker and can't stand for long periods of time would have been screwed. The only parking was on the street. If you got lucky, you could park right in front of the building. Most people were parking down the block or around the corner. There were no chairs. If there WAS a wheelchair-level booth, I didn't see it. And because of the way the booths were set up, I don't know if there would have been an easy way to move the primary ballot of the party to the table that was at wheelchair level.

Most people were in and out in about 20 minutes from our polling place from what I saw. We were there for over an hour between them trying to get the machine to work, figuring out if it was "legal" for an eleven-year-old to fill out his ballot, and someone in line whining about her getting so many stickers.