by Amy Gendreau, RDPFS Intern:
“Research reveals that since its passage, HAVA (Helping Americans Vote Act) has improved the voting experiences of people with disabilities and that it can be used to continue to address the difficulties people with disabilities face when voting,” according to a recently released report. HAVA was enacted in 2002 to address accessibility around the voting process, requiring at least one machine for every polling site for people with disabilities, providing accommodations, and improving voter turnout. In 2000, turnout of people with disabilities was 16.8 percent lower than that of people without disabilities. This gap shrank to 11.3 percent in 2020. In partnership with Rutgers University, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) published a report detailing HAVA’s impact, including strides made and areas for continued attention and improvement. “Examining the experiences of voters with disabilities alongside data on voter turnout and accessibility allows us to see both the substantial progress that has been made to improve voting accessibility, as well as the barriers that still exist,” said Professor Lisa Schur, Co-Director of the Rutgers Program for Disability Research. The report identifies issues that can be explored in future research, such as:
- Establishing forums for people with disabilities to share information and discuss their voting experience, including what voters liked and disliked, and what did and did not work well.
- Enhancing education about mail-in ballot tracking tools.
- Pretesting polling places for accessibility, ideally with the involvement of disability organizations.
- Increasing poll worker training to better assist people with disabilities.
While significant gains have been made, changing times have brought other challenges, including post-pandemic considerations with social distancing and the expansion of mail-in balloting. Learn more in the Rutgers Business School’s press release announcing that the U.S. Election Assistance releases report conducted in partnership with Rutgers. For the full report, visit the EAC webpage on Voting Experiences Since HAVA: Perspectives of People with Disabilities. New legislation proposed in the U.S. Congress would augment HAVA and expand areas to address in the voting process. The Accessible Voting Act of 2024 calls for establishing the Office of Accessibility under the EAC and creating a national resource center on accessible voting, among other items. Read additional details on the Congress webpages for the legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. For a summary of the Senate bill, read the Accessible Voting One Pager.
