Yeah - that’s fine. I know many people differ, and I presume the law supports them. Baggage of separate and equal and all that.
Just expressing my personal opinion that it just isn’t very important to me that society incur huge (we debate how large) expenses to accommodate a limited number of peoples’ preferences.
I dunno how I would feel if I were disabled. I would HOPE that I would not assume that society ought to incur considerable costs just to allow me the option of voting in person, when I could easily vote by mail. But that is just my conjecture/opinion.
The OP said this was the March 3 Primary and that only ten disabled voters showed up. I think there are always fewer people at primary elections but will be a greater number in the general election (hopefully this year especially). So the preparations may have not been needed this month but may be needed in November.
We vote at the nearby high school. In past primaries, we’ve gone to a large room at, say, the northwest corner of the school. In some other elections, we’ve gone to the gym at the northeast side. This last primary, it turns out we had to go to the cafeteria, on the southeast corner of the school. As we had parked near the NW corner, this meant we had to go the entire diagonal length of the school.
We’re able bodied. But as we were leaving, another woman was leaving as well, and she wasn’t walking too well. It was tough for her to go all that distance. She had parked in a handicapped space - which was maybe 20 feet closer to the door than our regular space. Big help, huh?
They had accommodations for the disabled. You could phone a number for help and I assume they’d send someone out to your car. The number was posted on a handwritten sign on the building’s door - which of course you couldn’t see until you’d gotten out of the car and hobbled several hundred feet to the door (I’ll admit, it’s possible that info was available online).
To the OP: get over it. “infinitesimal” is hardly valid - even if very few people needed it that day, unless you know in advance that the tech won’t be needed, you have to have a method to allow people to cast their vote. There’s rather a lot of history out there dealing with people not being able to vote because The Powers That Be found it inconvenient for them to vote, due to all sorts of reason like gender, skin color, etc.
Voting by mail is all well and good but not every place allows it: where I live, it’s an absentee ballot and you have to apply for that well in advance. If you don’t get the request in on time, too bad. If you do in-person absentee voting (in our area, they have them setup on the weekends in some central locations) you’ve still got the logistics of parking and hobbling to the door - but arguably you might concentrate the extra tech there. Again though, that requires the disabled person to do things in advance, and possibly travel further, just to exercise their right to vote.
I don’t know - the OP said that their original polling place was handicapped accessible according to the ADA. So let’s say that there is ten people left in this country on iron lungs. Should every polling place be set up so that if one happened to show up, they could vote?
Yeah, at some point it would not be a social good to spend excessive amount of resources to allow a small number of people to vote. If, for instance, you’re spending a substantial fraction of an average person’s lifetime earnings on compliance issues, everyone would be better off if you just split the money with them and didn’t spend the resources on the improvements.
Is it really that difficult to accomodate with a few chairs and a touch screen set up, no I don’t really think so. Our precincts are small, physically small too and we had one man come to vote in a fully motorized chair where he remained half inclined it took up a lot of space. He and his wife came in and I had to tell them we have 2 precincts and they were in the wrong one. It was at our “fire barn” next door, so they had to tunr around and load up to drive 1/16 of a mile to vote in an even tighter space. THeir perogative to come in person and we welcome it. We’ll see more needing accomodation in the general election. We also get trained on how to let the voter ask for accomodation rather than an EI make that decision for him.
Yes, elections are conducted according to state law. Those laws have to meet federal requirements but there is still significant state to state difference.
At least, right? We are in a pandemic and I lost count of all the people I’ve seen today. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are, like, eleven or even twelve people. I never thought we could get so overpopulated.
Makes sense. It’s not something I’ve ever really given any thought to.
Regarding the 10 handicapped people. Keep in mind that there may very well be more handicapped people that don’t show up because it’s too much work. As things become more accessible, it’s easier for them to get to you.
In King County Washington (Greater Seattle/Bellevue region), while there has been 100% mail-in since 2008, there are ALSO in-person voter options as well for everyone who needs accommodations. It’s not ONLY mail-in. Because we actually, you know, assume that everybody has the right to have their vote counted.
This is really the best way to do it. Pretty near everybody is able to participate.
What the disabled population goes through just to be able to cast their ballots should make the OP (and others in this thread) ashamed of themselves.
Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and Utah all have 100% Vote-by-Mail. Oregon was first, over 20 years ago.
I’m not sure of all the details, but it looks like Oregon has online accomodations for the sight-impaired. I expect other states may such accomodations as well.
No part of my OP implies disabled voters shouldn’t be allowed to vote. In my experience people who want to vote will vote. As for the second sentence, see my comment below.
I’ll agree. But my reality is that in the last 15 elections I’ve worked I’ve only had one voter requiring the services ADA equipment and facilities dictate.
(1) Evidently the State of Washington does precisely that, whether they want to or not.
(2) Voting by mail is an accommodation.
(3) Which is why I mentioned mainstreaming. Do you want to be treated as a “normal” person or do you want some accommodations? I don’t know where that line is.
Disagree. That’s exactly what voting by mail is for. A VBM voter gets the same ballot whether voting by mail or coming to their voting place. The exact same ballot. If your assertion were true then Washington state, as Procrustus said, is discriminating BIG TIME.
No part of my OP implies disabled voters shouldn’t be allowed to vote. But I do question how money and resources need to be expended to accommodate a small percentage of voters, especially when an easy to use alternative to physically showing up (i.e., VBM voting) is available – or, as in Washington state, required.
Agreed. Which is why, in my after action report, I suggested we have more voting booths and TWO of the disabled access machines.
We do have methods beyond VBM. One is called curbside voting. Another is called assisted voting. In my fifteen elections since 2006 I have never had a curbside voter and only once an assisted voter. And, BTW, that assisted voter? I was informed by a relative who came to our precinct that their brother wanted to vote, but was hospitalized. What did I do? I personally took the appropriate ballot and forms to the hospital so he could vote. I call that accommodating.
I won’t argue with this, but if I were handicapped and voting in person was difficult, I would ask the Elections Department to start sending me ballots by mail.
I never said disabled people should be disenfranchised. I said we spend too much for a small group, whom, in my experience, seem to get to my voting place and vote without much fuss. Ask yourself this: am I willing to pay for a helicopter to help disabled (or any) voters get to a polling place? There’s a yes/no line in there somewhere. I think we’ve crossed it in my County. Many of you don’t.
“Spend too much” based on what fiscal analysis? Where is your report indicating how much money spent is reasonable and why the dollar amount spent is unreasonable?
How do you know we’re spending “too much” money on this?
Educate me as to how much time,money and effort was spent. It seems it was limited to a touch writer, an accessible voting booth, and moving the polling place. How much extra does a accessible voting booth cost compared to a regular voting booth - and is there any reason a non-disabled person can’t use that booth? And aren’t the booth and touch writer one time expenses- I mean, you’ll be able to use them for future elections, right? How do you know the location was moved because ADA-compliant City Hall didn’t meet California State Election guidelines rather than some other reason? If you do know it was an ADA issue, which issue was it specifically? I’m looking at the Polling place accessibilty guidelines and I will be damned if I can figure out how City Hall can be ADA compliant but not meet these guidelines.
So, obviously, you have no disabled loved ones, you don’t have any disabled people in your circle of friends.
Get down off that high horse, pal. Karma’s a bitch. IF you live long enough, you’ll get a taste of disability. And all your words will come back to bite you in the butt.
~VOW