Voting Accommodations

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The voting process for people who are impaired in various ways has always been a process which needs more attention and changes to come its way. With the normalized ideals for people without disabilities in hand for voting, individuals tend to forget about the people who cannot do the same as them. This leaves these individuals to need help with their ballots which can become a form of discrimination and fraud. Touch screen ballot machines are an issue for people who need physical help just like mail in ballots are a huge concern for people who are visually impaired.

When a mail in ballot gets sent to an individual who has a visual impairment most of the time the ballots get sent back with it having to be voided it out because it was filled out wrong or the person helping them fill the ballots out put the opposite vote on the sheet that they would like it to be. Most individuals with these concerns need assistance with their ballots. The individuals care takers take advantage of this system and this should be changed for no fraudulent issues to occur. 

There are voting machines that are specifically for people with disabilities that are at the polling centers that help individuals make the correct vote in various ways. These machines have ear phones for the hearing impaired so that the machine can talk the individual through how to vote. The machines also have visually bigger letters on the board in front of them for the visually impaired, and these polls can also fit a full size wheelchair within the curtain for privacy. These are helpful devices that most of the time are not even fully in use. For example Matthew states, “In the last election, for example, a voter called her to report that a machine was placed in the corner, turned off, with a flower wreath hung on it” (Vasilogambros, 2018). The polling centers do not even take the time to turn the machine on and make sure it is working properly for the people who need it to vote. This is seen as discriminations towards the disabled group since they have to experience a hardship versus everyone else who walks in those doors. When individuals need the polling device they then turn it on, which takes a good amount of time. Since this does not directly correlate to the main population who will be walking in the doors, they do not care for it as much.

Vasilogambros, M. (2018). How Voters With Disabilities Are Blocked From the Ballot Box. 

Retrieved December 06, 2020, from https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2018/02/01/how-voters-with-disabilities-are-blocked-from-the-ballot-box