Observations From Below: Ed Roberts Still Has a Point

I love mailing lists. I sign up for as many as I can.  The reason I love them so much is I stumble onto things on the internet that I wouldn’t know about otherwise.  Last week I read an article from the Pew Charitable Trusts which talks about people with disabilities and voting in elections.  Spoiler alert:  there are major hurdles people with disabilities face when we go to vote.

It highlighted the fact that out of the 35 million voting-aged Americans with disabilities, only 55% voted.  That percentage has been dropping since the 2008 election.  Some main contributing factors to this decrease are due to inaccessible polling machines (steps only, needs earphones, small print, etc.), untrained poll workers, and lack of effort by all parties by not targeting people with disabilities to vote.

There is now push to revert to paper-only ballots in response to the hacking scandals from the 2016 elections.  Voting is another example of how I’m lucky, and that I haven’t experienced such barriers.  I have voted in all the major elections that I could since I have turned 18.  Sometimes my car or van has turned into a voting booth when the poll worker brings the official ballot to me because I couldn’t access the actual booth in the building.   In my experience in voting in the previous 2016 election, I voted early.  The building was very accessible, and there was an electronic machine that I could push the buttons fairly easily.   My poll worker was seemed very comfortable with helping me out.

I sat and mulled over this article for a week, and decided pulled up an old video clip of Ed Roberts called “Ed Roberts, His Words, His Vision.”  In addition to being a civil rights leader, he held a master’s in political science and ended up doing most of the work with a Ph.D. in that field.  He talked about the need to get people with disabilities registered, get them to the polls, and get them to start influencing elections.   Even though his speech recorded was in 1981, it feels very much ahead of its time.  It saddens me a great deal that almost 40 years later it appears we are still dealing with almost the same issues.

The disability community has listened to many of Ed Roberts’ pieces of advice, and we hold him up as a role model.  He is given credit for being the Father of Independent Living.  But we haven’t listened to his wise counsel about political activism.  I’m not arguing for one political party or another, but we all need to be more engaged than we have been in the political process of being citizens of the United States.

I’m still angry with the United States House of Representatives for passing the ADA Education and Reform Act of 2018, which paradoxically shows ignorance about the original language of the ADA.  The new bill attempts to solve a problem which does not exist in the federal law.  The bill tries to protect the businesses from lawsuits and damages, while the Federal ADA specifically does not allow damages to be collected to avoid the very problem the House is trying to fix.  It is true that some state laws have allowed damages to be collected, but we probably shouldn’t weaken a federal law over a decision of some states.

Here is an update from the NCCDD’s Policy Analyst, Erika Hagensen:

I wanted to update you on the ADA Education and Reform Act (H.R.620).  As we anticipated, the House voted on H.R. 620 on Thursday, February 15th, and the bill passed. Click here for a tally of House members’ votes. You can click here for a letter from the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) with over 200 organizations signing a joint letter opposing the bill.

Currently the Senate does not have a “companion bill,” or drafted legislation with the same aims.  We will keep you posted on any developments there.

Passing something in one house of Congress  without a companion bill on the other side can be an effort to do a number of things like:

– Create/build support or momentum for an issue (in public on the Hill)

– Push the other house of Congress to take up the issue (or be on record for not taking up the issue)

– Make it easier to attach the bill to a piece of “must pass” legislation.

While there is currently no Senate bill, it’s important to think of the vote in terms of this legislation over time.  This is a bill that has been introduced a number of times over the last 10+ years with no movement and very few co-sponsors.  This year, for the first time, there was a large number of co-sponsors, was voted out of committee, received a floor vote and passed — A significant number of hurdles to achieve after years of no movement.

Disability Rights NC is always looking to make voting more accessible for everyone, and last year launched a website called accessthevotenc.org.  The issue I see happening is our representatives won’t feel the need to pay attention to the disability community until, just like Ed Roberts said, we start voting and influence elections.

That’s how I roll….