Voting Gets Easier For Disabled, But Problems Remain
By Joseph Shapiro © NPR Health — On Election Day last year, the Government Accountability Office sent investigators to 720 polling places around the country to see if people in wheelchairs, or who were blind deaf or had other disabilities, could easily cast a ballot. The results were mixed. There was some barriers, from the parking lot to the voting booth, in more than two-thirds of the polling places. But it turns out this was a significant improvement over what GAO investigators had found when it did a similar survey in 2000. The findings prompted us to call Jim Dickson, an activist who’s taught a lot of people about the problem of polling places that often exclude people with various disabilities. Dickson, with the American Association of People with Disabilities, knows a lot about this because of his own advocacy, and because he’s got personal experience. He’s a blind man and, for years, he had to rely on others to help him fill out a ballot…. READ ARTICLE