The new FDR Wheelchair Statue at the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC

Voters With Disabilities The Sleeping Giant of American Politics

Some Important Facts: There are 54 million Americans with disabilities 35 million Americans with disabilities are of voting age 17.5 million voting aged Americans have a severe disability

In 1996, 31% of adults with disabilities voted in the presidential election, while 49% of all adults voted.

In 2000, 41% of Americans with disabilities voted compared to 51% of all adults.

If Americans with disabilities voted at the same rate as the rest of the population there would have been four million more votes cast in the 2000 presidential election.

How They Voted in 2000 Data from Harris Interactive indicates that Al Gore won the disability vote by an 18 point margin Candidate% Al Gore56 George W. Bush38 Ralph Nader4 Other candidates1

A Harris Interactive telephone survey in September 2000 found that 48% of people with disabilities think of themselves “a lot” as a “person with a health condition or disability” when it comes to politics and voting.

Fully 23% of people with disabilities say that they think of themselves primarily as people with disabilities when thinking about politics and voting. This was the most important group with which people with disabilities identify when thinking about politics and voting – more important than their party identification, race, or gender.

What If Turnout Had Been Higher? If people with disabilities voted at the same rate as the rest of the public, Al Gore’s margin of victory in the popular vote would have been between one and one and a half million. Had this happened uniformly across the country he would surely have won Florida and would now be President.

What If Turnout Had Been Lower? Had only 31% of people with disabilities voted as they did in 1996, George W. Bush would have won a clear margin in Florida and probably would have won the popular vote by a small margin of less than one million.

There Is a Problem With How Votes Are Cast and Counted According to a Harris Interactive survey conducted in December 2000, 95% of Americans with disabilities, compared with 86% of the general public, believe that we have a serious problem with how votes are cast and counted.

America’s Voting Systems 34% Punch Card Systems 18.6 % Lever Systems 27.3% Optical Scan Systems 9.1% Direct Electronic Recording (DRE) 1.6% Paper Ballot 9.1% Mixed System

Some DRE voting system are fully accessible to voters with disabilities. They can be used successfully by voters with hand and/or upper body mobility problems and allow voters who are blind or have visual impairments to cast a secret ballot.

Accessible Voting Systems and Manufacturers E-Slate, Hart Intercivic Kiosk, QuadMedia Accuvote TS, Global Election Systems i-votronic, ES&S

According to the Federal Election Commission, 20,000 of the nation’s 120,000 polling places are physically inaccessible to people with disabilities

Voter Registration People with disabilities register to vote at a rate that is 16 percentage points lower than the general population. There are more than 16 million people with disabilities across the country who are not registered to vote.

NVRA The 1993 National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter) requires that disability service providers offer the opportunity to register to vote to their clients. More than 40% of disability service providers are in violation of this law.

Organizing Tools Making polling places 100% physically accessible. Fighting for accessible voting systems. Increasing NVRA implementation. Assisting non-profit organizations in conducting get-out-the-vote drives.