USA: Votes of Disabled People among "Epidemic of Disappearing Votes"
By Kay Schriner (kays@uark.edu)
In a scathing new report, the Democratic staff of the House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary finds that the election irregularities reported in Florida during the 2000 presidential election are "representative of a larger, national problem."
The report states that the votes of at least 1,276,916 citizens across the country were not counted in the presidential race. This number is greater than the difference in the popular vote between the two leading presidential candidates. According to the report, "in at least four states, the number of unrecorded ballots was greater than the margin of victory of the prevailing candidate in that state and could have resulted in a switch in electoral votes between the candidates."
Examples of inaccessible voting
Disabled voters faced many barriers during the election, according to the report. In at least 18 states, these voters found inaccessible polling places, confusing ballots, and a lack of privacy and independence in voting. Among the problems cited were:
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A California voter with a disability required a portable ballot machine, but the only one available was a demonstration machine offering a choice between George Washington (the first U.S. President) and John Adams (the second President).
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A disabled Ohio voter could find no accessible pathway to the polling place and had to have a ballot brought to him outside.
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New York voters with disabilities reported widespread inaccessibility. One voter said that the polling place had a ramp, but that it was locked and unusable on election day.
The spectacle of the 2000 presidential election has focused worldwide attention on the deficiencies of the American election machinery. The problems are not new; experts have known for years that about 2% of votes cast are routinely discarded for various reasons. But the closeness of the 2000 election and the long dispute about its outcome have raised the political stakes.
Pressure for national standards vs. 50 different approaches
U.S. elections are run by the states, and many people - including members of the disability community - are pushing for national standards that would, among other things, impose uniform standards regarding accessibility of the electoral process. But such measures are likely to face challenges from states' rights advocates who view federal intrusion as, at best, unnecessary, and at worse, unconstitutional.
Proponents of national standards point to federal legislation such as the Voting Rights Act, which forced states to reform election practices to remedy the egregious racial discrimination of the past in which some states levied taxes on voters or required them to prove they were literate before allowing them to vote. African-Americans were the primary target of these laws, and voting rates in that group were very low before federal laws were passed to govern state conduct of elections.
The Democratic staff authors of the House report take on these issues. It says that "if voting rights were left to the option of states... as some would suggest we approach voting reform today, there can be little doubt that millions of Americans would still be subjected to poll taxes and literacy tests." It calls for Congress to take action to ensure the freedom and fairness of federal elections, which would affect many state- and local-level elections as well because they are held at the same time.
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