Why The Power Pledge Is Essential

Systemic barriers prevent people with disabilities from voting at the same rates as our non-disabled peers.

• In 2016, 60% of polling locations surveyed by the federal government across the country had at least one barrier to physical access or to private, independent voting for people in need of accommodations.

• More than 20,000 polling places in the United States are inaccessible in one way or another.

If disabled people had full access to the polls, as many as two million more votes would be cast in national elections!

​

​And many disabled voters face other barriers to voting.

• In the United States, rates of disability are higher among Black and Indigenous people as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community.

• All of these identities also overlap disproportionately with poverty and experience with incarceration. And people living under these unjust systems have reduced or no voting power due to:

  • uneven geographic distribution of polls

  • inadequate early voting

  • unfair, partisan redistricting

  • voter registration limits and purges

  • discrimination against people with mental and emotional disabilities

  • burdensome voter identification requirements and

  • other measures to suppress the vote.

​​

The good news is that when electoral processes provide more options and more flexibility, turnout increases among disabled as well as non-disabled voters. Expanded hours and locations, multiple options for how to cast a ballot, and simpler systems can enable everyone to vote. To engage every citizen in our democracy, everyone must have the right to vote in ways that are convenient and accessible to them.