ID: A Detroit Disability Power canvasser registers an elderly resident to vote while knocking doors in Detroit’s Core City Neighborhood. Oct. 11, 2022.
Despite federal laws regulating how polls must accommodate voters, a recent audit of 261 polling places in Metro Detroit found that voter-assist terminals were often not plugged in, missing headphones, showing error codes, or placed in ways that did not guarantee privacy. The greatest barrier to voting at these locations: a lack of accessible entrances. This included a lack of clearly marked entrances, buildings with stairs but no ramps, or ramps blocked by parked cars or signs.
“We want to be able to vote like everybody else,” said [Kenia] Flores, a voting access and election protection fellow at Detroit Disability Power (DDP), which conducted the audit with the support of The Carter Center. “We can’t do that if there are physical barriers that prevent us from doing so.”