Elyse Draper describes herself as a diehard voter.
“Just [a] get-out-and-vote person since I was able to vote in the '90s,” she said.
Draper and her daughter built a tradition of going to the polls together, collecting “I Voted” stickers. In 2011, Draper began to lose her vision because of a progressive autoimmune disease.
“When I started losing my sight, it started to become harder and harder for me to read the Blue Book, and really become more knowledgeable about the actual subject,” the Arvada writer and marketing professional said.
Draper said it eventually became tough to read her paper ballot, too. She needed someone to assist her and realized one of the things she was missing about the process was privacy. This year, for the first time, she tried electronic voting, using her own assistive technology on her computer at home to read and mark her ballot.
“[I] was able to not only vote and cast my choices privately in my home, I was able to really feel like I had that privacy back again, that independence, the autonomy to my voting,” she said.
Electronic voting was, for years, available to military and overseas voters. The Colorado Legislature expanded that access to electronic ballots for voters with disabilities in 2019; voters still had to print and return their ballots physically. A couple of years later, state lawmakers passed legislation allowing eligible voters to return their ballot electronically. Electronic ballots are one of many accommodations available to Colorado voters with disabilities.
“I think [voting is] one of the most fundamental rights we have in this country,” said Sara Ridenour, a disability rights attorney with Disability Justice, Colorado’s protection and advocacy organization.
The right to assistance to vote is protected under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other federal laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. The Help America Vote Act created minimum standards and funding to help states update voting equipment, including accessible machines.
“Before then, people with disabilities didn't have access to that technology to assist them in casting their vote and had to rely on having a person that they trusted in their lives to be able to help them vote or trusting the election workers to be able to assist them to vote,” Ridenour said.
Colorado lawmakers also passed laws in recent years such as accessible language for ballot titles and voting notices in care facilities.
Accessible voting at the polls and beyond
Election judge Steve Harley helps voters use the assistive technology available at a polling center in the Denver Central Library. He explained how some voters tap their choices on the tall and narrow computer screen of the ballot-marking devices. Others will use a handheld controller that’s marked with braille.
“It also has shapes and colors, so someone with limited vision or someone who doesn't know braille, but can sense the shapes, can learn by listening to an audio ballot,” he said as he held up a set of headphones.
The audio ballot reads each contest and choices for voters.
“If it's a person that doesn't want to read the screen, I can hide the screen so that the things that they're voting don't appear on the screen,” Harley said. “Basically it's a privacy mask.”
The same voting center also has lower voting booths for wheelchair users and people who need to sit while they vote, as well as full-page magnifiers on hand.
Harley said he could also support a voter using a sip-and-puff device to cast their ballot. Voters print their ballots after they’re done marking their choices. For those who need assistance handling those paper ballots, Harley said, “We could have a bipartisan pair of judges come and help them and pick the ballot up and talk them through what we're doing when we're carrying the ballot over to the ballot box and casting the final ballot into that box so that everyone knows that there's no manipulation involved.”
Julie Mackay Percy, an election judge supervisor in Denver, said there’s standard documentation and protocol to follow whenever another person assists a voter with marking their ballot. “And they keep them on file at the clerk and recorder's office.”
Many interviewed for this story said the big game-changer in Colorado has been the state’s universal mail-in voting.
“[Mail-in voting] is so accessible because it's at your house, you have it. You can read the ballot. You can do it in your time,” Molly Kirkham, a legislative policy advocate for The Arc of Colorado, said. “Especially as someone with a disability, it's very important because that is how you get your voice heard. A lot of times if you have accessibility issues, if you're in a wheelchair, if you're blind, it can be very intimidating and hard to go in person.”
Kirkham credits mail-in voting for her chance to cast her first ballot.
“I remember it because I was actually in the hospital for surgery and I refused not to vote. So we have a photo of me in the mail room, in the hospital voting,” she said.
Lillie Fitzsimmons, a full-time student with several disabilities, said mail-in voting has eliminated extra stress from the process.
“I think depending on what somebody's dealing with, it might be being immunocompromised, it might be stimulation issues, it might be other health issues that make it difficult for them to leave their home independently, mail-in voting kind of removes those barriers,” she said.
Top-of-mind issues ahead of the midterms
This election, Kirkham is thinking about issues such as cuts to Medicaid and protecting the right for people with disabilities to live and receive care in their own homes, known as Olmstead protections, established in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1999.
Those issues rank high for Marcus Aguilar-Pauli as well.
“While a lot of people in the Capitol see [Medicaid] as numbers, see it as a budget, I see it as something that helps people connect and helps people, especially with disabilities, be able to function, but most important, be part of the community, be with friends, be with family, do things like go to the movies or go to the park,” said Aguilar-Pauli, who is a self-advocate, aspiring filmmaker who works at The Arc of Larimer County.
Aguilar-Pauli said he is passionate about voting “because it's our right and we as people have a voice.”
Chrissy Krumm has voted in every election since she was 18 and believes “voting is an act of standing up for the country.”
Krumm is an advocate with a self-directed group of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities called People First. She’s been active with the group for more than two decades. It’s sponsored by The Arc of Larimer County. In this election, she’s thinking about Medicaid and issues like immigration and respect for others.
“It's everybody who has a story to tell who's being sidelined and not respected,” she said.
John Broadbent of Denver, who has a disability, said he votes every chance he gets.
“Through our democracy, through our right to vote, we have the option to choose our own story for how we want to deal with the problem of today,” he said.
It’s about more than casting a ballot
Nicole Rosendale, a youth and adult advocate with The Arc of Larimer County, said voting and the chance to take part in elections are fundamental American rights, but voting accessibility is also about “recognizing that those individuals are valued members of the community.”
“They have voices and experiences that matter to all the issues, not just the concerns like we're talking about with Medicaid and financing Olmstead,” Rosendale said. “We never want to confuse a person's need for support with their ability to have preferences, make choices, and contribute.”
The Arc of Larimer County held an educational open house on how to vote in mid-October. Rosendale said a big focus for the organization during election season is helping intellectual and developmental disability communities connect with good, accessible information to help them understand how to vote and what they’re voting on.
She pointed to resources such as THINK+change’s “Empowering the Disability Vote.”
Disability Justice also offers guidance for voters with disabilities in its Q&A: Voting Rights in Colorado, as well as resources for election workers to help them better understand how to assist people at the polls.
Fitzsimmons and other advocates and voters with disabilities would like to see more accessibility improvements to the Blue Book ballot informational booklet, and more resources plainly explaining races and issues. She said it’s important for people to understand that “accessibility isn't just about whether someone can technically vote; it's about whether they can participate meaningfully, independently and with the same dignity as everybody else.”