Last time around, I told the story of people with print disabilities who were suing the state of Alabama for the right to be able to cast an absentee ballot privately—that is, without anyone’s assistance.
Well, the same thing is happening in Indiana.
If you have a print disability, completing a task that requires reading and or writing on paper materials may not be possible for you. And that means that you may not be able to vote absentee using a paper ballot without someone else’s help.
This is particularly a problem for blind people since they can’t read a paper ballot. But people with physical disabilities, like me, may also have print disabilities when it comes to voting absentee in the traditional way. I can read a paper ballot just fine with my eyes once it is spread out in front of me. But I don’t have the arm function necessary to take the ballot out of the envelope, mark it, and put it in the return envelope. I need someone to do that for me.
In Indiana, the law said that anyone in that situation could only receive assistance in casting their ballot from traveling boards, which are people authorized by the entities administering elections in each county to come to voters’ homes and assist them.
This setup is unfair and burdensome for a lot of reasons. So, after the 2020 election, the American Council of the Blind of Indiana and some individual plaintiffs with print disabilities filed a federal lawsuit charging that this state law violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against disabled people by recipients of federal funds.
One plaintiff said they had contacted their county election office to make an appointment to receive assistance from a traveling board, but instead some traveling board people just showed up at their home one day unannounced. Another plaintiff claimed that they received no response to their request for traveling board assistance and so were unable to vote in that election.
In September, U.S. District Court Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson, an Obama appointee, shot down the traveling boards requirement and ordered Indiana election administrators to allow people with print disabilities to be assisted in casting absentee ballots by a person of their choosing, with a few exceptions.
In the Alabama case, the plaintiffs want to be able to read, mark, and submit absentee ballots electronically. Their complaint says that people who are overseas or in the military are already able to vote absentee electronically in that state and they want the judge to declare their right to do the same. No ruling has yet been issued.
The Indiana plaintiffs also sought this additional remedy. But Magnus-Stinson said that since, unlike in Alabama, no one in Indiana has a legal right to vote absentee electronically, she would not grant that right to disabled people exclusively.
Even those attempting to undermine voting profess to support everyone's right to vote. But for disabled folks, this requires creativity and flexibility not included in the current laws.