How many people would think twice about going to the polls if they knew that a person would be standing in the booth with them? For D.C. voters who are visually impaired or have limited hand mobility, and are thus unable to vote using standard methods, this is the reality of going to the polls, and it constitutes a clear infringement on their right to vote in private.
Barriers to voting by the disabled have long been decried by disabled rights and civil rights advocacy groups. This year, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics took a huge step forward in reducing those access barriers by purchasing 150 computerized machines to aid voters with visual impairments or limited dexterity.
However, the recruitment and training of volunteers to staff these machines has been left to several advocacy groups rather than the Board of Elections. And unlike regular poll workers, these volunteers would be unpaid. These two factors have led to a critical shortage of volunteers.
Instead of standing as a triumph of expanding disabled enfranchisement, these machines will be unused during this year’s elections, and the disabled will continue to be denied the right to cast their own vote.
The Board of Elections bought the machines as part of the court settlement of a lawsuit brought by several disabled-rights lobby groups. Previously, those with visual disabilities or limited hand mobility required an assistant in the voting booth, a dehumanizing experience that undermines the disabled voter’s independence.
Disabled rights advocates assert that the disabled must be allowed to cast their votes independently and, more importantly, privately. The right of free, anonymous speech is guaranteed to able-bodied citizens and cannot be denied to the disabled.
The new machines allow visually impaired voters and voters with limited hand mobility to listen to an audio recording of the ballot, then vote by pushing a button on a separate electronic box. It is therefore the disabled citizen who casts the vote, rather than a poll worker.
Balloting procedures that demand physical assistance for the disabled are part of a wider denial of independence to the disabled in this country. Despite the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, many citizens still face discrimination in employment, education, health care and housing. Access barriers exist at every turn, preventing the disabled from utilizing everything from Medicaid to public transportation.
Without the ability to vote, the disabled will never achieve equal status with able-bodied citizens. A reduction in the barriers to disabled voting is long overdue.
It is ludicrous that protecting the right of the disabled to vote privately and independently should be contingent on the efforts of a group of small, non-profit organizations. It is further reprehensible that regular poll-workers can be paid a stipend but staffers for these computerized machines cannot. While the city has agreed to correct these grievances in 2004 by assuming the responsibility for recruitment, this redress does not come soon enough. Two years is too long to wait for the disabled to be released from second-class citizenship.
