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A new survey finds that nearly half of disabled voters encounter obstacles when trying to cast a ballot. Here a disabled voter uses a head wand to make selections on a touchscreen.
Disabled citizens face obstacles to voting, survey finds
More than half of voters with disabilities report having experienced an obstacle to casting their ballots, polling released Tuesday shows.
Problems with voting machines was the No. 1 issue cited by these voters, and nearly half said previous problems with voting machines had prompted them to not vote at some point.
The survey was conducted by Southpaw Insights, a survey firm, for Smartmatic, a maker of election systems.
Rutgers University research released this summer estimated that 14.3 million people with disabilities voted in the 2018 midterms, which was about 12 percent of voters.
"Improvements in the accessibility and usability of voting machines would provide a real opportunity to make the election experience better for voters with physical and cognitive disabilities," said Jessica Broome, the Southpaw Insights CEO.
The survey of 1,004 registered voters who self-identify as having a mobility, sight, hearing or cognitive disability found that 72 percent said they voted at every or almost every election and 80 percent said they were very likely to vote in 2020. The Rutgers research found turnout in 2016 among people with disabilities was 49.3 percent, an 8.5 percentage point increase from the previous midterm, in 2014.
The survey released Tuesday found that 73 percent said they prefer voting on Election Day in person either by computer or by marking a paper ballot.
Among the top improvements voters with disabilities called for:
- 41 percent would like to be able to vote electronically from home.
- 36 percent called for better voting instructions to be provided.
- 32 percent favored more user-friendly voting machines.
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Ballot measures are good democracy — but only if you can understand them
Marginal improvements have been made to help voters understand the questions posed to them on the ballot this November, a new study concludes, but such ballot measures still favor the college-educated — who represent a minority of the U.S. population.
This year voters in eight states will decide the fate of a collective 36 such propositions. In a study released Thursday, Ballotpedia assessed how easy it is to comprehend what each proposal would accomplish, concluding that the difficulty level had decreased compared with the referendums decided in the last off-year election of 2017 — but not by much.
In fact, according to a pair of well-established tests, 21 of the 36 ballot measures cannot be understood by the 40 percent of the voting-age population who never attended college.
Two states asking Supreme Court for permission to regulate Electoral College conduct
Colorado has become the second state to ask the Supreme Court to decide if states may legally bind their presidential electors to vote for the candidate who carried their state.
The issue of so-called faithless electors is the latest aspect of an increasingly heated debate about the virtues and flaws of the Electoral College that has blossomed, especially among progressive democracy reform advocates, now that two of the past five presidential winners (Donald Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000) got to the Oval Office despite losing the national popular vote.