Congress Introduces Voters with Disabilities Bill of Rights (H.RES.757)

As Americans headed to the polls last week many in the disability community continued to face barriers to voting in their precincts. In an effort to address those barriers and compensate for the challenges voters have faced throughout the pandemic, Congress has introduced the Voters with Disabilities Bill of Rights, which would require that polling precincts expand accommodations and provide alternative ways for persons with disabilities to cast their ballots. We review what's in the bill. 

Bill details

Community size

The first data point that stands out is the method Congress has used to approximate the size of the disability community. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have estimated the size of the disability community to be roughly 61 million, (the CDC introduced the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System in 2013 to measure prevalence) the American Community Survey has suggested the number to be 41 million, which is how Congress has chosen to represent the population.

Catalyst for the bill

The resolution cites the School of Management and Labor at Rutgers University findings − that there continue to be gaps in participation between voters with disabilities in the November 2020 elections and a national survey by the Election Assistance Commission − which found that "11 percent of voters with disabilities experienced difficulties with voting in the November 2020 elections, nearly twice the rate of voters without disabilities." 

The resolution goes on to reference the well-known barriers persons with disabilities face, such as lower turnout rates and inaccessible voting facilities. 

What are the Voters with Disabilities Bill of Rights?

If passed in both houses, the Voters with Disabilities Bill of Rights would establish that "voters with disabilities have (the same) equal access to the ballot as nondisabled persons", which would include the following: 

1. ensuring that voters with disabilities have the right to a private and independent vote, whether voting in person or remotely;
2. requiring that voters with disabilities have equal access to voter registration;
3. ensuring that voters with disabilities have the right to request accommodations and materials in accessible formats while voting;
4. requiring that voters with disabilities have the right to the assistant of his or her choice while voting, with the exception of the voter’s employer or union representative;
5. ensuring that voters with disabilities have the right to request to move to the front of the line at polling places, or be provided seating or another form of accommodation;
6. ensuring that new ballots are made available for voters with disabilities who make mistakes while filling out their ballots;
7. ensuring that voters with disabilities have the right to vote after the polls close if they are in line, or waiting to vote curbside, prior to the polls closing;
8. requiring that voters with disabilities have the right to request accommodations or an alternative method of casting their ballots if their polling places are inaccessible;
9. ensuring that people with disabilities who have a guardian also have the right to vote and that they can advocate to have their right to vote restored, if it was taken away in the guardianship process;
10. requiring that voters with disabilities are adequately able to report violations of their voting rights and advocate on problems they experienced while voting; and
11. ensuring that voters with disabilities have access to voting systems and materials in polling places that are accessible and well-maintained.

In truth, much of what is in the Voters with Disabilities Bill of Rights should already exist if State and local governments are complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For example, ensuring voters have access to a private voting space, equal access to voter registration, allowing for reasonable accommodation, and ensuring ballots are accessible for persons with disabilities, are all existing requirements of the ADA in some form or another. Whether those requirements are adhered to in every situation is another discussion entirely − spoiler: they're not.  

Check out: What is in the Americans with Disabilities Act?

In 2017, the Government Office of Accountability (GAO) found that 60 percent of examined polling places had one or more impediments for persons with disabilities in the 2016 election. The same study found that nearly 16% of voting places didn't even have accessible parking, 32.5% had inaccessible routes into the building, 21.9% did not have accessible entrances, and almost 20% had inaccessible paths of travel inside the voting facility − which seems absurd since (in many cases) those types of barriers often can be addressed as easily as moving furniture out of the way. What's more, those numbers may be even higher, given that the GAO was not provided access to 23% of the facilities due to "voting area restrictions." 

Of course, State and local governments are often tasked with coordinating massive voting efforts which utilize make-shift polling places such as American Legions, libraries, churches, and even bars, so it isn't far-fetched to imagine how the GAO found so many inaccessible sites, but the compliance requirements exist regardless. 

So is the bill all fluff? 

The first provision of the bill that stands out is VII, which would require precincts to develop policies and procedures for allowing persons with disabilities to vote after the polls have closed (as a reasonable accommodation). In many cases, the designated person − usually the Supervisor of Elections − will attempt to compensate for voting challenges by allowing voters to continue to enter the facility and cast their vote after the facility's planned hours of operations. But there are often legal constraints that prevent them from allowing voting to continue past established time frames. If passed, this bill may provide those officials flexibility in how those hours are managed and for how long votes can be cast and considered valid. 

The following provision, VIII, would also further clarify expectations in regards to reasonable accommodation, requiring that "voters with disabilities have the right to request accommodations or an alternative method of casting their ballots if their polling places are inaccessible." This could mean that inaccessible polling places, such as the 60 percent referenced in the GAO's study, could be required to provide an alternative way for persons with disabilities to vote, such as voting online or at a different location. Both of which − no doubt − would be challenged in some way. 

Asking persons with disabilities to vote at a different location that is not convenient to them or potentially even in another district will require access to adequate public transportation and effective management and oversight of any modifications to the process, and voting online would no doubt become a national debate before and after election day.  

Conclusion

How the bill will be interpreted on a bi-partisan basis is anyone's guess at this point, but we anticipate the two provisions mentioned to be the most contentious pieces of it. What's left in the bill appears to include further clarifications on what polling places should already be doing, so it will be interesting to see how it is debated in the near future. In either case, it's great to see lawmakers attempting to bring awareness to this issue.  

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