By Brian Dimmick: For Complete Post, Click Here…
People with disabilities have long faced some of the greatest barriers to voting in our elections. From inaccessible polling places and a lack of working accessible voting machines to onerous restrictions on absentee voting, our right to the ballot has often been ignored or forgotten.
In 2020, over 11 percent of voters with disabilities reported that they faced some type of difficulty casting a ballot — more than any other group and despite expanded access to mail-in voting due to the pandemic. But instead of embracing the more accessible forms of voting that sparked record turnout, including among voters with disabilities, states have doubled down on new and more restrictive voter suppression laws.
In 2021 alone, more than 400 anti-voter measures were introduced by states across the country, many of which are most burdensome to people of color and voters with disabilities. These measures run the gamut from restricting access to absentee voting, eliminating Election Day registration, and making it more difficult to vote early in person, to criminalizing the act of assisting voters with disabilities to vote. We’re challenging some of the measures that have become law in court in Georgia and Texas, where egregious restrictions illegally burden the right to vote for people with disabilities.
Whether you choose to vote in person early or on Election Day, or vote absentee, you’ll have to navigate a complex web of state and local election rules and deadlines regarding voter registration, absentee ballots, and fixing or “curing” a ballot that was rejected, often due to missing or incorrect information.
