From today’s PBS News:
When Kenia Flores goes to the polls, she listens to her ballot choices with headphones and uses an accessible machine to cast her ballot.
This device allows Flores, a blind voter, an alternative to hand-marking a paper ballot. When working and properly maintained, these voter-assist terminals can help Michigan voters with hearing, visual or other disabilities participate in elections.
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. The most widespread issue was not having a fully set up wheelchair accessible voting booth. Only 16 percent of polling places in Metro Detroit were fully accessible, or had no impediments to voting, the audit found.
Based on her experiences with barriers at the polls, Flores was not surprised by these findings.
“We want to be able to vote like everybody else,” said 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.”
State lawmakers are now considering a package of election bills that seek to protect and expand access to voting for Michiganders, including the state’s Black voters and voters of color, 1.3 million voting-age residents with a disability and voters with limited English language proficiency.
Read the complete story here.