It’s Time to Get People Involved in Our Communities - MAD Winter'13
The following is a feature article on getting people in the disability community involved in civic engagement from the Winter 2013 Making a Difference magazine.
It's Time to Get People Involved in Our Communities
By Becca Bauer
Millions of Americans across the country went to the polls and voted in November's election. Among those expressing their say in our country's future was a group of people who have rarely been effectively engaged in the civic processes that many Americans take for granted – people with developmental disabilities.
While there have been many improvements in protecting the rights of people with disabilities and their access to vote, as a group they are still discriminated against and not taken seriously enough by political leaders or poll workers, who may not be familiar with the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) rules and regulations. And unfortunately, some people with disabilities choose not to participate at all.
This must change if people with disabilities expect policymakers to respond to them as an important voting bloc. The fact that people with disabilities are not taken seriously became even more apparent during the presidential campaign when disabilities were hardly mentioned by either political party. The US Senate also failed to ratify the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Treaty, which based on protections from the ADA, would support the international community's resolution to end discrimination against people with disabilities. The Senate's failure to reach the necessary two-thirds margin to approve the treaty speaks volumes to our policymakers' lack of commitment to people with disabilities and their need for social change.
Developmental Disabilities Councils were created in the early 1970s by Congress to ensure the development of innovative ideas toward promoting the inclusion and integration of people in communities who have been labeled as having developmental disabilities. Among the many safeguards they try to protect is civic engagement for people with developmental disabilities. This means working with individuals, families and organizations so that people with developmental disabilities can take part in the public discourse and gain leadership and advocacy skills that will empower them to become more active in the public policy process and join the ranks of frequent voters.
Because it is so important for people with disabilities to be involved in public policy processes that determine their rights and access to services, it is critical for our political leaders to consider them as a group that needs to be heard. The Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities (GCDD) hopes to facilitate nationwide conversations with a broad spectrum of people that will promote the goals of civic engagement.
GCDD, in collaboration with the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities (NACDD), hosted a nationwide conference call on December 3, 2012 for all of the Developmental Disabilities Councils and Protection and Advocacy (P&As) organizations to come together and share their ideas about civic engagement for people with disabilities, accessibility issues and post Election Day feedback.
Facilitated by Eric Jacobson, GCDD executive director, 15 representatives from Developmental Disabilities Councils and P&As from across the US joined GCDD to share their input for the development of innovative ideas toward promoting the inclusion and integration of people with developmental disabilities in all aspects of our communities.
The call featured a presentation from Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN), on their recent findings about pre and post Election Day, followed by a series of questions on:
- People with disabilities', voting experiences in each state
- How Developmental Disabilities Councils as innovators in the disability community can engage people who have been excluded or marginalized in the civic discourse
- How to encourage voters with disabilities to increase their participation in decision-making or political processes
Decker kicked off the conversation with a brief introduction to the important nature of this work and a small background on how the ability of people to vote independently, privately or even voting at all has been vexing for the disability community for many decades. Funded by the National Council on Disability, along with a few other partners, NDRN tracked what happened on Election Day, so they can use this research to address voting obstacles for people with disabilities in the future. They already have close to 1,000 responses from people with disabilities on a post election survey. In addition, they will be compiling statistics from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and any of the Protection and Advocacy organizations' reported experiences.
"We were very concerned that we were going to have problems, especially given the emotional hyper partisanship of the election, that would possibly be a detriment to people with disabilities, especially people with intellectual disabilities being able to exercise their constitutional right to vote," said Decker. "We didn't want to just find out that things went badly, but we also wanted to try and prevent any problems that we could. We were very nervous about poll workers and poll watchers questioning the competence of people with intellectual disabilities to vote and challenging them, especially if they were easily identifiable or coming from a group home. We really were anxious about what our constituents would think."
NDRN worked closely with the DOJ. The DOJ has an interestingly split jurisdiction where the justice section has the responsibility to enforce accessibility issues and the voting rights section has the responsibility under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to enforce the accessible voting machines process. For the first time in a very long time, NDRN had a joint meeting with both divisions of DOJ to talk about coordinating their efforts.
"The DOJ puts out hundreds of poll observers and attorneys, and we wanted to make sure that if one person was in a voting place to observe, that they would look at both the accessibility of the polling place as well as the operation of the machines. That didn't always happen in the past, and I have to say we had some really good cooperation,"
said Decker.
"It's hard to judge whether there were a lot of really serious problems or if it was more a function that people have always had these problems but now know where to call and how to address them. So, we will have to filter out the results and the impact of our activity. The good news is we were able to handle a lot of problems and resolve them. Not surprising, one of the top issues was the long lines. They did present a lot of problems for people with disabilities, both with physical and intellectual disabilities. How polling places dealt with this was a mixed bag. Many places were good about providing chairs or allowing people to take a number and be able to rest. But there were a lot of complaints about people who weren't getting accommodations as they stood in those long lines. And that's something I think we need to look at in the future, especially in a national election that everyone is so energized about."
"Another major issue was the failure of accessible voting machines to work or the failure of poll workers to know how to set them up and operate them. There is an interesting paradox that we have an older population of poll workers who have to work with very sophisticated technology and that doesn't always work. We had a fair number of complaints about machines that did not work. Then we had the day-to-day, ad hoc accessibility problems where someone drove a truck in front of the accessible ramp or the accessible entrance was locked and no one opened it up."
In addition, Decker echoed what many advocates in the disability community are pushing for, the need to make it clear that people with disabilities are a critical voting bloc. "I do think we do have a serious issue in the disability community that the politicians don't see us as a voting bloc, and therefore aren't addressing a lot of the issues that we care about in their campaigns. Not only is it a constitutional right to vote, but it is also a political problem in making sure that we are convincing people this is a constituency they need to appeal to, work with and address their campaigns and positions to disability issues. It is a multi-level approach and hopefully we will continue doing that and the Protection & Advocacy organizations and Developmental Disabilities Councils work together to learn from what this experience was and build on our vehicles that we have already put in place."
After Decker concluded, he turned it over to Jacobson who proposed several questions to the group to find out about voting feedback, accessibility and civic engagement on a state-by-state basis. The following are a few short examples of the comments:
Q: Did you receive any phone calls or any information about accessibility issues or problems with people trying to get to the polling places and being able to vote?
Becky Harker, Iowa Developmental Disabilities Council:
"In Iowa, about a month before the election, we learned that some county officers had purchased a piece of equipment that was not accessible to people who were blind. Iowa has been using the AutoMARK voting machine pretty exclusively. We have done training on those throughout the State, but some counties chose to purchase this other piece of equipment, which we had evaluated and at the time we evaluated it, was accessible for people who were blind. But, in the final manufacturer, some of those pieces were left off. So, we did meet with those people and we did make alternate arrangements for them."
Q: Were there any states that did anything educating people with disabilities about the voting process?
John Shaw, Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities:
"We actually worked with the government accountability boards and created a booklet on voting, the Voting in Wisconsin Handbook for Individuals with Disabilities. You talked a little bit about the voter bloc, and we have been working for several years now to develop a voter bloc. Currently we have about 18,000 individuals on our voter bloc list. We are hoping to increase that substantially in the next couple of years so we can build a stronger voice."
Q: I want to talk about the voter bloc in terms of how we get people involved in the process. What are the kinds of things you do as a state, especially during the legislative session, to keep citizens with disabilities engaged in the legislative process?
Marilyn Sword, Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities:
"About three or four years ago, we used some very draconian cuts in Medicaid services to implement a massive Medicaid matters action across the state with rallies simultaneously in 15 towns across Idaho, as well as at the Capitol. We got about 17,000 people involved and their names were on petitions presented to the legislators about the cuts, and it did make a difference. We also have a disability advocacy day at the capitol, like many Councils do. And, for the third year we have been doing disability advocacy workshops in four areas around the state on Saturdays in November and December, where people can come at no cost. It's all day and people present on Medicaid, managed care or the legislative process, and now we have focused the afternoons on communicating with your legislators and how to tell your own story."
There were problems identified and several issues that still need to be addressed, but the conference call was an excellent first step to collaboration in strengthening civic engagement and the public policy processes for people with disabilities.
"We all have to realize that this is not a problem that gets solved and then goes away. It's an ongoing conversation. Polling places change; poll workers change all of the time; political parties change," Decker said. "This is something I think should be high up on everyone's agenda for the future because this is always going to be a challenge."
Sidebars:
To read the full conference call comments and conversation, visit www.gcdd.org/blogs/gcdd-blog/2412-gcdd-getselectionday-feedback-from-across-the-country.html
Thanks to our participants:
- Becky Harker, Iowa Developmental Disabilities CouncilRose Coster, Florida Developmental Disabilities CouncilBeth Kessler, Oregon Council on Developmental DisabilitiesMarilyn Sword, Idaho Council on Developmental DisabilitiesVicky Davidson, Missouri Planning Council for Developmental DisabilitiesValarie Bishop, South Carolina Developmental Disabilities CouncilAnn Trudgeon, Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities CouncilBeth Stalvey, North Carolina Council on Developmental DisabilitiesDonna Meltzer, Washington State Developmental Disabilities CouncilRoger Webb, Texas Council for Developmental DisabilitiesPat Nobbie, PhD, Georgia Council on Developmental DisabilitiesValerie Meadows Suber, Georgia Council on Developmental DisabilitiesJohn Shaw, Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental DisabilitiesAlicia Boehme, Protection & Advocacy, Disability Rights WisconsinKatherine Lawson, Virginia Board for People with DisabilitiesCurt Decker, National Disability Rights Network
