No, but you came right out and made it very clear that it shouldn’t be easy for them to vote.
In your op, you said this:
This is what’s ticking people off. I’m 100% able bodied and this is even insulting to me.
“How *#!@%$ hard is it to get someplace and make marks on a piece of paper?”
For some people, probably not that hard, a ramp here, a railing there and they’re fine. For others it’s probably a whole lot *#!@%$ing harder than you think it is.
That’s great if it works for you. It doesn’t mean everyone wants to do it that way.
Two other things to keep in mind. 1) The government requires businesses to by ADA complaint. They should be setting the example, not telling people to stay home. 2)With complaints of voter suppression always in the air, any discussions about getting people access to the booths really shouldn’t involve defending why it’s not easier.
All those people that complain that their low income community has 1 location while the upper class, and smaller, community a few miles away has 6…we don’t tell them to vote at home. Early and absentee voting is suggested, but we work on finding ways to get more polling places, not explain why 1 is more than enough for 10000 people.
ETA: suggesting that making things accessible to handicapped people puts them in some sort of elite class, you’re gonna have to walk me through logic on that one. I’m not following. I can’t imagine feeling like I’m better than everyone else just because I got to roll into a wheelchair lift while the rest of you had to walk up those six stairs.
It seems you must have a broad perspective of the money, time, and effort expended to accommodate disabled voters. Please set forth an accounting of such, as well as the overall impact to disabled voters in your community. You clearly wouldn’t have come to these conclusions without a thorough analysis of these facts and data.
It seems to me that in order to reach your conclusions, you would have answered this to your satisfaction, by researching the difficulties faced by disabled voters and how types of machines, voting booths, signage, location, and parking affect those disabilities.
I’m also interested in your detailed view on the elite status of the elite. What societal, financial, or other advantages are they enjoying as a result of this elite status?
Oh, wait. You sent your letter to the department and board without doing this research?
I would be interested in your analysis of how mainstreaming can be accomplished in the absence of accommodations.
What federal requirements? I thought the Republican SCOTUS had thrown out the voting rights act.
Although I agree voting should be handicapped accessible, a much more serious problem is state actions whose purpose is to prevent people from voting. Whenever I read about people standing in line for hours to vote, I muse on the fact that I cannot stand for an hour–or even fifteen minutes. I use absentee ballots for US elections while I have never had to stand for more than a couple minutes to vote here in Canada.
The voting rights act provision that was struck some required certain governments with a history of racial discrimination to get clearance from the Department of Justice before making any changes to voting requirements, with the idea of preventing voting practices that made it harder for black people and people from other racial minorities from voting. It had nothing to do with accessibility for people with disabilities.
I wrote in post #35 that “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.”