A pair of advocacy groups are releasing a voting guide aimed at helping people with disabilities understand their rights at the polls. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/TNS)
With the midterm elections approaching, disability advocates are offering up guidance to prepare voters with developmental disabilities as they head to the polls.
A newly updated guide from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the National Disability Rights Network and the law firm McDermott Will & Schulte is detailing the rights of people with autism, intellectual disability, mental health issues and other cognitive disabilities.
The 88-page document touches on the role of guardianship, how to keep or restore a person’s right to vote and how an individual with a disability can get assistance at the polls. It includes a breakdown of each state’s voter competency laws and information about how to advocate for voting rights in guardianship proceedings or in state laws. In addition, there is a fact sheet that people with disabilities can bring with them to the polls.
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The guide is aimed at people with disabilities, their families, advocates, service providers and other stakeholders.
“Voting is in many ways the most fundamental of rights, as it is the pathway for people to secure all other rights,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “We want to make sure people with disabilities have the tools they need to be able to exercise their right to vote.”
The guide highlights several federal laws protecting the rights of people with disabilities to cast their ballot including the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. But, it warns that election officials and disability service providers have used their own competency requirements in some cases to keep people with disabilities from voting.
Voters with disabilities have the right to get help from the person of their choosing at the polls, the guide notes. Helpers should explain the instructions for casting a ballot, follow the wishes of the individual they are assisting and maintain that person’s privacy.
If a person’s right to vote is challenged, the advocacy groups said that they are still entitled to cast a provisional ballot. In such an event, an election worker will decide later whether or not a vote should count.
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