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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's Melissa Harris-Perry. It's The Takeaway and it's 46 days until the final day to cast a ballot in this year's midterm elections. I've got a few questions for you. Are you registered to vote? Are you sure? Have you checked your voter registration status? Even if you think you're registered, it's pretty easy to just double-check and make sure. Do you have a voting plan? Are you voting by mail? If so, do you know the deadline to request a ballot in your state? If your plan to vote in person, do your polling location?

Are you going to be doing it early or are you an election day voter? Phew. I know, it's a lot to think about, but some of these are the kinds of so-called small things, but they could turn into obstacles that prevent you from actually making your voice heard in your polling place. Thinking about all this, we asked you, should we make it easier to vote, and if so, how?

Tim: Hello, Tim from Jacksonville Florida, voting it's simple, four days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, convenient for everybody that's working no matter what schedule you're on.

Lee: Hi, my name's Lee and I've managed a polling place in Georgia for 15 years. I sincerely believe that we should be able to vote anywhere in the entire state that we live in.

They did this during the last presidential election where they let anybody in the county voted the state farm arena. The number of people that voted went up astronomically.

Mary: Hi, my name is Mary Pool. I'm calling from Safety Harbor, Florida, and I teach communication at the university locally. My students cannot believe that they can't vote online.

Zia: Hi, this is Zia, I'm calling from Philadelphia. I think that election day should be a holiday. I think all voting places should be accessible and there should be childcare voting places.

Debbie: Hi, my name is Debbie, I'm from West Palm Beach. I think mail-in ballots should be accessible to anyone who wants them for any reason whatsoever.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thanks to everybody who called in and for all of your great ideas, because there are still a lot of barriers to voting. When we're thinking about access to voting, really, it should be easier for every voter. Today, on The Takeaway, we're putting voters with disabilities at the center of the conversation. According to the CDC, about one in four adults in the US lives with some type of disability, that's 61 million people.

When it comes time to cast their ballots, voters with disabilities can face a number of challenges at the polls. For in-person voters in the 2016 election, the government accountability office found that less than half of polling places were accessible from parking to the voting booth, but then came 2020 when accessibility increased. Despite all the other desperate challenges of that year, we actually made gains in voter turnout for people with disabilities because expanded access to mail-in ballots pushed disability turnout to 17.7 million people.

That was up from 16 million in the presidential election four years earlier. As we're going into these midterms, some of those accessibility gains are disappearing state by state. To hear more about how barriers still hinder people with disabilities from voting, we talked with somebody who's an expert.

Michelle Bishop: My name is Michelle Bishop and I'm the voter access and engagement manager at the National Disability Rights Network.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Michelle explained how the measures taken during the 2020 presidential election against the backdrop of COVID-19, made it safer for all voters to cast a ballot including voters with a disability.

Michelle Bishop: Can I tell you, 2020 was probably the most stressful year of my life for many reasons? We were all worried about this pandemic, but when you work in elections on top of that, it's a presidential election year. Not only are you worried about the pandemic, but you're thinking I really still need people to vote and I don't know if they're even thinking about it, given everything else that they've got going on.

We did an amazing job of just taking down some of those barriers and making the process of voting easier and more accessible for everyone. We did it in the name of the pandemic.

I work inability rights. I wish we had done it for people with disabilities, but hey, if we're going to do it for COVID, I'll take it because it just made it easier to participate in the process, all across the country states were looking at expanding their early voting, giving people more time, a bigger window to be able to get to a location and vote.

They added drop boxes which is really great for people who can't stand in line. If you're like me, the early voting line was still several hours long where I lived, but a Dropbox was going to have you in and out of there in 10 minutes. We expanded our vote by mail. We extended some of those deadlines. We took away some of those extra requirements like witness signatures and notaries and all these things we used to make people do just to be able to vote by mail or even just having to have an excuse for why you wanted a vote by mail ballot instead of going to your polling place.

We added curbside voting and drive-through voting and a lot of places, which was brilliant if you think about people who are immunocompromised, who can't be in a crowded polling place, but if you really think about people who were inevitably going to test positive for COVID-19, after the deadline to get a vote by mail ballot had passed. Letting them stay in their cars and interacting with a couple of poll workers with PPE on that sounds like a COVID testing site.

That sounds way safer than sending them into their polling places. We made a lot of changes on the fly to make our elections work around COVID and it had this amazing effect of just making them more accessible all around. It worked because we had historic levels of turnout in 2020. People were able to vote despite all odds. That, to me, is one of the greatest testimonials that adding these options, having a menu of options for voters so that they can figure out what works for them, and making it as convenient as possible to vote works.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yet, despite the fact that it worked, what we've seen after 2020 has instead been states passing more restrictive voting laws, including closing many of those polling places, making it harder to vote by mail again, shifting voter registration restrictions, how does this affect people with disabilities?

Michelle Bishop: We are in such unprecedented times when it comes to voting in elections because of exactly what you're talking about. We saw so many rapid changes in 2020, and now we're living through the aftermath of that. It's for real mixed bag. There are states that are also moving to take some of these pro-voter policies and make them permanent.

They're still wanting to use expanded early voting and curbside and drop boxes and expand their vote-by-mail options and use electronic ballot delivery for people with disabilities, which is amazing because mailing a piece of paper is not accessible to everyone if that's your only option for receiving a ballot. We are seeing some of those changes become more permanent, which is incredible, but we're also seeing a lot of pushback like you mentioned, and attempts to restrict that. It has an impact on all voters.

The thing is, when you have a disability, it has an exponential impact on your access because people with disabilities, we just face barriers every day as it is. We don't really have a set of society. It was set up completely for everyone, to be accessible for everyone. When it's something as complicated as getting registered to vote, getting your ballot cast, there's just additional barriers that we face. The more we restrict early voting periods, the more we're asking people with disabilities to be able to line up accessible transportation.

If they need someone to assist them to go to vote on one set period of hours on one specific day, which is just more difficult to do. We're asking people with disabilities to get doctor's notes and notaries and witness signatures by some pretty concrete deadlines, to be able to get their vote by mail ballots counted. We're asking people with disabilities to forgo things like curbside voting and drop boxes that help them when their polling places were not accessible.

Less than half of America's polling places are actually compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and that's always been true. We've never really made the process fully accessible regardless of COVID. Taking away these additional measures that are great stop-gap measures to help make the process more accessible until we've truly honored federal law, is just making it more difficult for eligible voters to be able to cast their votes.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's not just a question of policy, we've also seen acts of intimidation and threats against people with disabilities in their caregivers, is that right?

Michelle Bishop: That happens. That's something that we're always concerned about. Sometimes people with disabilities, when they go to vote in person, they get questioned on their eligibility, which you really can't do as a poll worker. You can't, if somebody's on the roles. They're on the roles and they have the right to cast their ballot that day. You can't question whether or not they should be voting just because they have a disability.

That's always a concern and we've seen this rise in everything coming from 2020 and the fact that we're living now in era of the big lie. There is this focus on we have to prevent fraud and the idea that there's somehow fraud in a system that honestly is not particularly riddled with fraud, and so you get these questions about when someone brings an assistant with them to vote, which is your right under federal law. People with disabilities and people with limited English proficiency have the right to bring anyone they want with them to assist them to vote. The only exceptions to that are your employer or your union rep. That comes straight from the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This is a right that you have, and it's a really important right for people with disabilities because until we make the process fully accessible and fully private and independent for people with disabilities, they still have to be able to vote. Some people are relying on that assistance to be able to cast their ballots at all until we can truly make the system accessible. It was really crucial in years like 2020 when we think about people with disabilities who live in long-term care facilities.

When you think about someone who lives in a nursing home and they traditionally rely on a friend or a family member or someone who works in the facility to make sure that they get a ballot, help them fill it out, and then it gets returned on time. These are really important rights that are what make the system work, and they're being questioned unnecessarily. Now, we're seeing attempts to restrict who can assist you at the polling place, who can assist you to return your vote by mail ballot, even though this is something that has been protected by federal law for a long time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You talked about the rights under the Voting Rights Act for a person with disabilities to bring someone with them to the polling place. What are some of the other rights that are currently protected and accommodations that are meant to be in place at physical polling places?

Michelle Bishop: We've talked so much, actually, about voting by mail in the last couple of years because it was such a rock star of 2020 when people had to socially distance. A lot of people wanted to be able to vote remotely in some way instead of going to a polling place. The polling places are actually still really critical. In-person voting is really critical. For a lot of people, those remote options are not fully accessible, and going to a vote center or a polling place and physically casting your ballot there, especially if you need that accessible voting equipment, for a lot of voters, that's what makes it work.

I don't think we're really anytime in the foreseeable future going to see in-person voting go away. I don't know that voters want to. A lot of voters love voting in person, that you get your sticker that you get to wear all day. People want their sticker. They want to tell everyone they voted today and be proud of it. I don't know about you, I got to take my selfie and post it on social media with my sticker.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Selfie with a sticker or it didn't happen.

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Michelle Bishop: Exactly, but it's true. There's a lot of people listening who know that exact feeling. You go and you stand in line and you cast your ballot and you get your sticker and you feel-- It's the most patriotic I ever feel in my whole life in that moment. We really are failing to make it fully accessible for all different types of voters and to really accommodate their needs and we have accessible voting equipment. That's why you get those touchscreen machines and things like that that you see at polling places. I heard those were put in place to replace some older equipment.

Also, it makes voting more accessible for people with disabilities. It makes it so that you don't need that assistant, you're able to privately and independently cast your ballot, but we're seeing issues with a reduction in use of that equipment, or poll workers aren't being trained on it. Voters show up and there's only one machine and it's still in a box in the corner because it hasn't been set up and the poll workers are trying to discourage you from using it when you really have a right to use that machine. For a lot of people with disabilities, that is the thing that makes it possible to cast your ballot.

We have concerns with that as well. Polling places are, as I mentioned earlier, not fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. We are literally still using polling places where there's nowhere accessible to park and there's not a good path of travel and the door is too heavy to open or the ramp is dangerous or the polling place is in a basement and there's only stairs to get down there. There are very real physical solvable barriers for people with disabilities when we go to vote in person.

As much as we've talked about some of those things that were big in 2020 like voting by mail, at every point in the process, there are absolutely access barriers that we have failed to solve. I don't know if everyone realizes that. For voters for whom it's easy, for voters for whom there aren't a lot of barriers and they think, "I just go block up the street at the polling place. I'm in and out in 15 minutes, cast my ballot, get my sticker and I go," I don't know that they realize that that's not everyone's experience, but it should be. It should be as easy for every voter as it is for that voter who thought, "Why are we talking about this? This is no big deal."

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Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. We're pausing here but stick with me like an I Voted sticker on election day because we're going to be right back with more on voting accessibility in just a moment.

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I'm continuing with Michelle Bishop from the National Disability Rights Network, and we're talking about voting accessibility for all voters. For many people, living with a disability is an identity and a lifelong experience, but there are able-bodied voters who might need more accessible voting at some point in their lives.

Michelle Bishop: A lot of times people think about disability as a health condition or an unfortunate circumstance. That's not really how we tend to look at it, people with disabilities. It's part of who we are. It's an identity. The same way your gender, your religion, your race, ethnicity are part of your identity, your disability is just a part of who you are. If we design the world around us to be accessible to everyone, your disability doesn't have to hold you back either. That's really where we come from. The thing that makes disability really different is exactly what you said.

It is this one group that you could join anytime, whether or not you choose to. You talked about voters who just get older. We don't talk about it as disability. We just say, "I don't see as well as I used to. I don't hear as well as I used to. My hands are a little shakier now." Sometimes we don't say, "I use a wheelchair." You get to hover around, and we pretend it's not the same thing. We have all kinds of ways of talking about disability when it's acquired through our lives that don't necessarily connect with that disability identity. Those accessibility accommodations make a difference for those voters the same way they do for someone who's identified as disabled their entire lives.

It's like when you think about curb cuts. You know that part of a curb that dips down and it's level with the street that you usually see on corners? Anyone who's rolling luggage or pushing a stroller, those that uses that curb cut instead of hopping up and down the curb, well, it wasn't invented for those folks. It's incredibly convenient for anyone with a stroller, but it was invented for people who use wheelchairs because it's the only way they can get on off the curb. It just has a side effect of making the street more accessible and easier for everyone to use, whether or not they identify as having a disability.

When we think about things like accessible voting equipment, it can change the contrast, increase the font size, it can read it to you. It does things like warning you if you've overvoted or undervoted so you can correct that before you cast your ballot. They have all these great features that work for a lot of people. Curbside voting is a great feature for anyone for whom standing for any length of time or walking any amount of distance or to even just getting in or out of the car is going to be a challenge whether or not you think of yourself as a person with a disability.

Really, making the system more accessible for people with disabilities genuinely makes the system more accessible and easier to use for everyone. It's just a good idea. I've talked a lot about it being law because it is and that part's my job as an advocate, but it's actually just a good idea. It just makes sense for everyone. It's things that we don't think about that make our lives better as a whole that really have a huge impact. When it comes to something like voting, voting is just so important. It's so important. If we don't have our vote, how can we protect any of our other civil rights? voting just matters that much that we have to make sure that every eligible voter is able to have their voice heard.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is there a such thing as the disability vote in the way that we sometimes talk about the African American vote, the Southern vote even the suburban or a soccer mom vote? Given how intersectional disability is as an identity, does it operate also like a [unintelligible 00:18:53] for voting?

Michelle Bishop: I think there's very much a disability vote, and I wish we recognized it more. I think the reason we don't talk about it isn't because it's not there, I think it's because we're not actually included in a lot of the mainstream and traditional polling. They ask a lot of questions to get your identity down to, like you said, there's the soccer moms and the NASCAR dads and all that stuff, but we don't ask about disability. That's not an identity that we're taking into account when we're talking to voters about whether or not they plan to vote and who they plan to vote for and the issues that matter to them and why.

It's just something we're not taking account of, but it's there. Disability absolutely is going to impact how you see the issues that really matter to you. Not that there's even issues that are really specific to people with disabilities but that disability is a part of every issue that you can imagine that really matters right now. Employment is a huge issue right now. People with disabilities are dramatically unemployed and underemployed compared to the general population. We're some of that last hired and first fired. We saw that during the pandemic, there's a disability component to that issue.

Healthcare absolutely is a disability issue for the people who need it the most and who have the least access to affordable healthcare. I think we saw that if there's examples to me, of a disability rights movement into disability vote, I think about attempts to eliminate the Affordable Care Act in the last few years. The fact that people with disabilities held us in at the United States capital, that helped turn the tide and helped save the ACA. That's why we still have it today.

We should be absolutely thinking that people with disabilities who did that, who are really willing to put themselves on the line to make sure that Americans have healthcare. I think that it's there. I think the thing that's hard for people to grasp about the disability vote is that, like you said, we are a really diverse community. The interesting thing about us is we don't necessarily vote for one party or another.

We're not in anyone's pocket, but there is some evidence from pre-elections to show that we tend to vote for whoever comes out and talks directly to our community and talks to us about our issues because we are a little attention-starved when it comes to the candidates themselves, they're less likely to have platforms that are disability specific. They're less likely to talk to our community. When they do, we tend to have a big reaction to that. There is votes there to win if you're a candidate, they should be thinking about the disability vote. The other thing that I think is really hard for people to wrap their minds around is that our community is so large.

The census would tell you, people with disabilities are probably one in five, but the CDC and few research center would tell you one in four Americans are a person with a disability. That is a huge population. That is an overwhelming number of people. There are about 40 million eligible voters with disabilities in the United States. That is enough if you could win their hearts to determine the outcome of any election that we've held in the United States. In my mind, the disability vote does exist. We're just a bit of a sleeping giant right now in American politics that if candidates and campaigns really started taking a good look at us, there's so much potential there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Michelle Bishop is the voter access and engagement manager at the National Disability Rights Network. Thanks so much for joining us.

Michelle Bishop: Thanks so much for having me. This was such a great conversation.

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