A Roadmap to Equal Voting Experience for Voters With Disabilities

E. John Sebes
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Executive Summary

Important strides have been made in the ways in which American voters with disabilities are served. Nevertheless, misconceptions about these voters persist at the highest levels, including a lack of awareness of the rights specific to these voters, and how these rights are not met. Outdated but common views illustrate lack of awareness of the specific voting rights of Americans with disabilities. Many voters with disabilities must accept risks and challenges that other voters do not. In fact, they may not be able to vote at all, because they are not served by any of the current options.

The reasons inadequate voting service for Americans with disabilities arose are primarily financial—there is little business incentive for the commercial election technology industry to produce innovations to better serve voters with disabilities. The industry is not solely to blame; outmoded policy frameworks that are used to justify providing fewer services to smaller groups of disadvantaged voters are equally at fault.

A road map is required for change that lays out a different and stronger commitment to all voters, and defines the requirements for new uses of technology with concomitant public policy to more aggressively meet all the needs of different kinds of voters with disabilities and different types of disadvantaged voters.

True democracy requires that the “hierarchy of needs” be replaced with a model based on uniform voting rights: a model that guarantees equally safe, secure, and effective voting for all voters, regardless of need. To put a fine point on it, there were upwards of 38 million voters with disabilities eligible to cast a ballot in 2020, and unfortunately they were nearly twice as likely as non-disabled voters to encounter problems.

Uniform voting rights encompass the principle of equal protection: no voter should be compelled to forgo some elements of protection of their ballot or their voting experience, in order to exercise their rights. These rights are not met in the current status quo; voters lower on the hierarchy of needs receive inferior service due to increased costs or other limitations.

To overcome the defects, necessary actions include technical innovations, changes to election administration, policy changes, and advocacy for them.

By abandoning the hierarchy-of-needs policy framework, and adopting the principle of full service for disabled voters in every situation, we define a pyramid of service, with each higher level having progressively more requirements for equal service.

This paper sets forth a roadmap of objectives, and actions for each, in terms of technology, policy, and advocacy. Taken together, the roadmap’s guidance comprises an undertaking of considerable effort and importance, but taken individually, each action is firmly rooted in current facts on the ground, and tractable steps forward.

Editor’s Note:

This paper was originally produced in June of this year; publication targeted for September to coincide with announcements of specific technology work in this area.