Disability Community Fears Paper Ballot Mandate Will Hurt Voters with Disabilities

January 29, 2021                                                    

Contact: Erika Hudson [email protected]

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the undersigned disability organizations issued the following joint statement expressing concerns over a paper ballot mandate.

How ballots are cast in the United States varies depending on what different jurisdictions offer to their voters. Today, most voters in the U.S. cast their ballot by marking a paper ballot by hand or by Ballot- Marking Device (BMD), with some use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines.

Most American voters are familiar with the former, which requires voters to mark, verify and cast a paper-based ballot. BMDs use an electronic interface to aid voters in marking their ballot. Once the voter has made selections with the BMD, the device directly marks on or prints the ballot. The voter then typically verifies and casts the ballot into the same optical (or digital) voting scanner that hand marked paper ballots are cast. BMDs simply increase the accessibility of paper ballots by allowing voters with disabilities to use these accessible voting machines to magnify, ‘voice,’ and mark their ballots. For example, a blind voter cannot privately and independently mark a paper ballot with a pen, however, they can privately and independently mark their ballot using a BMD.

DRE voting systems, on the other hand, allow voters to use an electronic interface to mark, verify and cast their votes electronically with or without a paper back up. Arguably, DREs provide the best option for voting privately and independently for all voters with all types of access needs based on age, disability, language fluency, literacy, and many other individual circumstances, as guaranteed to all voters by the Help America Vote Act and Americans with Disabilities Act. DREs eliminate the need to handle or directly verify a paper ballot, which prevents BMD voting systems from being fully accessible to all eligible voters.

Despite overall reduced paper consumption in many areas of daily life, as a result of technological advancement, paper-based ballot voting options have become the preferred voting system to many who believe mandating the use of paper ballots is necessary to ensure the security of our elections. However, it must be made abundantly clear, that the ability to privately and independently hand mark, verify, and cast a paper ballot is simply not, and will never be, an option for all voters.

Given that paper ballots are already the predominant method of casting a ballot in America today, mandating paper ballots is frankly unnecessary. Additionally, any mandate of a paper-based voting system will inevitably harm voters with disabilities. A paper ballot mandate would:

1. End all voting system innovation and advancement to produce a fully accessible voting system that provides enhanced security without relying on inaccessible paper;
2. Limit voters with disabilities’ federal right to privately and independently verify and cast their ballots and;
3. Ultimately segregate voters with disabilities.