Last night on the news, I quickly caught a story regarding people with disabilities and voting. I believe the news anchor stated that people with disabilities make up the largest minority voting bloc. However, I have been unable to find more information regarding those numbers.

This story got me thinking about voting, which led me to do some research on the topic. Below is a summary regarding some information I found concerning people with disabilities and their access to the ballot box.

Overall, there are 33.7 million Americans with disabilities who are of voting age/eligible to vote. However, many polling places are inaccessible to people with disabilities because the polling place is often in a church basement or the upstairs of a building. At these locations, there is sometimes no access to an elevator or ramp. Additionally, people with vision problems, such as the blind, do not have the option to request a Braille ballot, requiring them to have somebody else “vote” for them/interpret the ballot.

To provide evidence to these frustrations, a recent study found that people with disabilities are 20 percent less likely to vote and 10 percent less likely to register to vote than their non-disabled peers. The aforementioned stories regarding accessibility at the polling place, probably has left many people with disabilities discouraged and hence, they give up the motivation to vote as this study seems to indicate.  

Below is the link for the article where I found this information…it is pretty interesting, and goes more in-depth.

http://www.accessiblesociety.org/topics/voting/