In late January, a judge in Wisconsin ruled that there were just two ways someone in the state could return a mail-in ballot: they could either place it in the mail or return it to their local clerk in person.
That was a big problem for Martha Chambers. For the last 27 years, Chambers, who is 59 and lives in Milwaukee , has been paralyzed from the neck down after a horse-riding accident. She can write and paint using a stick she holds in her mouth. But when it comes to voting, she needs help with her ballot. “I can fill out my ballot. I can sign it. I can fill in the little dots,” she said. “But I can’t hand it, I can’t fold it, I can’t put it in the envelope,” she said. “ I could not put it in the mailbox. I can’t get out my door to put it in the mailbox.”
When Wisconsin’s spring primary came around, she didn’t want to go vote in person because of health concerns, so she voted absentee. She took a risk and decided to have someone else return her ballot for her, despite court rulings saying that was illegal. “Like a rebel,” she said. “We should be able to vote without any concern, just like anybody else.”
This year, Chambers was one of millions of Americans trying to figure out a dizzying array of new restrictions and seemingly constant changes that threaten their ability to vote. Since the 2020 election, Republicans and GOP-aligned groups have focused on tightening laws that deal with transporting mail-in ballots and assisting voters, saying they are ripe for fraud. For the millions of US voters with disabilities, those restrictions are significant.
“Any of the restrictions that have been proposed, if they have an impact on access for voters as a whole, then they tend to impact access voters with disabilities exponentially,” said Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager with the National Disability Rights Network.
Nearly 18 million Americans with disabilities voted in the 2020 election, an increase of six points from 2016, according to a recent study from Rutgers University. Voters with disabilities were nearly twice as likely to report some difficulty casting a ballot as voters without a disability in 2020. A provision of the Voting Rights Act says “any voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice, other than the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of the voter’s union.”
In Alabama, Republicans banned curbside voting, a practice used by voters who cannot enter the polling place because of a disability. A new Texas law limited what assistance voters could get at the polls and required those who provided assistance to swear an oath. In Florida, a new law makes it harder to request a mail ballot and it is now illegal to return more than two ballots that do not belong to themselves or a family.
In Wisconsin, there have been a slew of court rulings this year tweaking what’s allowed under state law. In July, the state supreme court said ballot drop boxes were illegal, but left unclear whether third parties could help voters place their ballots in the mail. In late August, a federal judge ruled that voters with disabilities can have someone else assist them with returning their ballots after Chambers and a handful of other voters filed a lawsuit.
But voters are still confused about the law, said Barbara Beckert, the director of external advocacy for Disability Rights Wisconsin. Over the last few months, she’s been fielding questions from voters who are still unsure about what they’re allowed to do.
One of the people she talked to recently was someone taking care of a friend who was disabled. Instead of taking the person’s ballot to the mailbox, he walked his friend to the mailbox, a distance from their home, because they weren’t sure if they could take the friend’s ballot to the mailbox. She said she had also heard from voters who could not place their own ballots in the mail and chose not to vote because they did not want to break the law as courts had interpreted it before the August ruling.
“This’ll be the fourth election this year. And for each election the guidance and the law has been different for ballot return assistance. Do you find that confusing? I do,” she said. “A lot of people with disabilities are isolated. They may live in a congregate setting. They may not have internet access. They’re not following the breaking news on the latest lawsuit about election law,” she said.
When Texas held its primary earlier this year, Amy Litzinger, a 34-year-old resident with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair, had to figure out if she was even eligible for assistance. Texas law only authorizes a voter to get help with their ballot if they cannot write or see or if they can’t read the language the ballot is written in. Litzinger can read and write well enough to scribble her name. She wasn’t sure if she qualified for assistance.
And even if she did, the person helping her would be required to swear a new oath, administered at the polls that said Litzinger represented she was eligible to receive assistance. Among other things, the assistant had to swear that their assistance would be limited to “reading the ballot to the voter, directing the voter to read the ballot, marking the voter’s ballot, or directing the voter to mark the ballot”.
Earlier this year, a federal judge blocked Texas from limiting the kind of help voters can get at the polls, allowing assisters to do more than just read and help fill out the ballot. They still have to sign a modified oath.
“What I’m worried about is if my attendants know that they have to sign something, and they feel uncomfortable with it, not only will they not take me to vote, they won’t work the whole day if they know that I’m planning to vote. Because they’re nervous about the whole thing,” she said.
In Florida, voters can only return two ballots for people not in their families.
“Not everyone with a disability lives with a family, or maybe they don’t have a caregiver and rely on their neighbor,” said Olivia Babis, a senior policy analyst with Disability Rights Florida. “It’s restricting who people with disabilities can choose to have help them or support them delivering that ballot.
“There are some concerns about the chilling effect,” she added. “When you have the administrator of the nursing home collect the mail, does that count as you’re turning in 15 people’s ballots? … There’s been no real clear language or legislative intent there.”
In Alabama, the state’s ban on curbside voting makes it harder for voters with disabilities to keep their votes private, said Eric Peebles, 41, who has spastic cerebral palsy and is the executive director of the Independent Living Center of Mobile. Those with disabilities qualify to vote by mail in Alabama, but must get either two witnesses or a notary to sign their ballot. During the pandemic, that was extremely risky for Peebles because of his high risk for complications from Covid-19.
“I need assistance filling out my ballot. I would much rather be declaring my preferences to my assistant in the sanctity of my car with the windows rolled up, rather than sitting in a gymnasium where, if you’re lucky, they’ve got the paper dividers up there,” said Peebles, who has sued Alabama over the access it provides for disabled voters.
Litzinger, the Texas voter, said many of the restrictions stemmed from the view that people with disabilities could easily be unduly influenced or manipulated into how they cast their vote – an idea she strongly disputed.
“The idea that people with disabilities are intentionally more influenced or more vulnerable than the rest of us, when we all get ideas from people we know about what we care about. People care about things in groups, that’s how it works,” she said.
“I have a degree in political science. I’ve been a deputy registrar. I know what I’m doing. Nobody’s telling me what to vote for. I go research it myself. I just need help opening and closing envelopes.”
