15:07:46 She is going to introduce our awesome panel and facilitate this event, so thank you so much, shout out to Chanel from the leadership conference who helped put this together, and just a couple of housekeeping things.
15:07:49 This is being recorded, and also I wanted to share that we wanted to do this as a zoom rather than as a webinar because we wanted the collegiality and collaboration to be right here with us rather than just talk at you, so please mute yourselves until you ask questions, and if you could keep the chat…
15:08:18 Don't overdo the chat because I think it puts a burden on everyone, so in that spirit we wanted to connect with you as much as possible, so Michelle, thank you so much for doing this.
15:08:26 >> NEW VOICE:  Leslie, thank you. I am Michelle Bishop, the voter access and engagement manager at ND RN, nationalist ability rights network.
15:08:46 I'm really excited today because I see a lot of names and faces that I know but I also see a lot that we don't know, which we love. We want to make new connections.
15:08:51 Before we get started, shout out to Leslie. Especially that his ability community, we appreciate your leadership in making sure all the spaces in which we work are inclusive and accessible. The commitment you make to that shows and means a lot to me, we appreciate you.
15:09:08 I see a lot of my colleagues nodding so I know they feel the same way, they agree. We have an exciting panel of speakers due today, but I do want to stress, Leslie is not right, we want this to feel like a conversation amongst friends about issues that are important going into 2024.
15:09:31 We encourage you to think about it that way, ask your questions, make comments, all of those great things. That said, I will get us started.
15:09:37 I am Michelle, I'm your MC today, I am a white woman with curly brown hair, and my signature black plastic rim nerd glasses, I have an ND RN virtual background behind me. I'm going to be introducing her speakers today, starting with Jennifer Mathis who is the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for civil rights in the US Department of Justice, I hope I got that right.
15:10:05 Marlene, the executive director of the national display rights network, Maria town, Pres. and CEO of the American Association of people with disabilities, and Kelly Israel, the coordinator for national coalition on accessible voting, and Jessica Mathis with rev of Georgia, not to be confused with Jennifer Mathis.
15:10:22 Jennifer, please take it away.
15:10:22 >> NEW VOICE:  Thank you so much, I'm really happy to be here and participate in this. The coalition is lifting up disability rights within this space, and I would say that certainly within the civil rights division and Justice Department, our voting rights work very much has a strong disability rights piece to it.
15:10:59 The disability rights section has an active collaboration with the voting section and they've done lots of different work together in many different spheres, so really good to see this set of folks speaking in this coalition on these issues.
15:11:22 And appreciate you inviting me to join. I will talk a little bit about some of the enforcement work that the civil rights division is doing on disability rights and voting.
15:11:35 I will talk a little bit about some other areas of our work as well. You have enforcement work, statements of interest we filed, listening sessions that we have been doing with US attorneys offices in different communities, we have election monitoring that has happened specifically on disability access issues.
15:11:57 So I will just give you some of the highlights that work. So I will start by just saying all of that is part of an ADA voting initiative we have in the civil rights division and that initiative grew out of a GAO report actually from a number of years ago.
15:12:18 It was one of many reports finding very low – strikingly low accessibility rates among polling places across the country. I think this one started in 2008 at 20% of polling places at that point were accessible to voters with disabilities across the country.
15:12:45 The ADA voting initiative is led by the disability rights section along with the US attorney program, so they work with attorneys offices all over the country collaborating on ADA matters and many of the US attorneys offices have open compliance reviews on disability voting accessibility issues with support from the disability rights section.
15:13:08 They have been enforcing through litigation and otherwise there've been hundreds of – actually thousands I guess of surveys of polling sites that have been conducted around access issues. This is all really part of that work.
15:13:22 On the enforcement side I just wanted to highlight briefly our most recent matter, earlier this month on November 6, we issued four letters of finding to four counties in Texas that we found were violating ATA title II by failing to make accessible key voter information on their election websites.
15:13:55 Smith County, Reynolds County, Colorado County, and… That represents one county in each of the traditional districts in Texas.
15:14:00 On those websites, these provide important information about how to vote, registration requirements, voter ID requirements, voting information specific to people with disabilities, details about early voting, details about past elections, details about election day voting.
15:14:25 The civil rights division found that these websites were not accessible to people who were blind or have low vision or you can't grasp a mouse, use screen readers, keyboards, and other assistive technology.
15:14:40 That was earlier this month, I think we are now beginning to talk to those counties, but this was the first matter of that sort that we have done enforcing the voting rights through the accessibility of election websites.
15:15:05 I also want to mention briefly a case that was filed back in June of this year by the US Attorney's office, Central District of California, the civil rights division has worked with them actively throughout the investigation and continues to work with them. This is a case concerning the accessibility or really be pervasive in accessibility of vote centers across Los Angeles County.
15:15:38 This is based on surveys in 2016, 2020, and 2022 elections, and during the most recent elections, 100% of the votes centers that were surveyed had and accessible elements, for example, lack of accessible parking, abrupt level changes, excessive cross slopes undesignated accessible routes.
15:16:11 Ramps with steep slopes or without required handrails, entrances or exits that were obstructed or too narrow, or had high thresholds, protruding objects, and voting arrows with narrow roots, so that was just filed in June.
15:16:30 Those changes are now underway, and more to come, but I wanted to highlight that. It was a long time coming through an investigation that has been going on since 2016, but we are excited about the prospects of getting remedies for folks in LA County. So we can vote on the same terms as everybody else.
15:16:58 So that some of our enforcement work, I wanted to highlight also, we had recently extended a settlement agreement we have from St. Louis, city of St. Louis, around accessibility… We just extended by a year and 1/2 and added additional provisions requiring an outside expert to conduct accessibility surveys and identify remedial measures and train staff.
15:17:40 In addition, wanted to mention before I forget, are valid dropbox accessibility guidance. We issued that last year, 2022, sort of a follow-up to guidance that we issued during the Obama administration which had sort of an accessibility checklist for polling places.
15:18:03 This was sort of a follow on to that concerning valid dropbox's, which had been addressed in earlier guidance, so those are some of the significant things we've done, and addition, we've done some statements of interest, the disability rights section and voting section collaborated last year on a statement of interest in a case involving voter assistance for absentee ballots to be returned in Wisconsin.
15:18:41 Those were claims under the ADA and the voting rights act, and we recently filed another statement of interest in a case in Texas involving Section 208 of the voting rights act, additionally we've done as I alluded to before, significant amount of election monitoring that involves accessibility issues, anything was interesting during the last election, there was some pushback to that. There were some public statements from Secretary of State.
15:19:31 These people are doing election monitoring and using the ADA, will they think of this, essentially. But we are doing it and basically the ADA applies, then we will continue to use it. Before I close I will just urge folks to talk to us, to file complaints with us if you are aware of voting issues with accessibility, voting issues with voter assistance provision.
15:19:59 I would say also voting issues with respect to the denial of registration or voting by people under guardianship or for capacity reasons, we are interested in all of that.
15:20:12 So please talk to us, please let us know when you encounter these issues. My time is up, I'm going to send it back to Michelle.
15:20:33 >> NEW VOICE:  Jennifer thank you, that was incredible, and thank you for all the work that DOJ is doing in civil rights and disability rights to protect access to the vote. Thank you for letting us know how to be good partners in filing complaints.
15:20:48 I will stress again if anyone has questions, you can raise your hand, thrown the chat, we want to make sure it interest is as well. In the meantime I will pivot to Marlena Hsiao, one of the things… Access to the vote from intersectional perspective.
15:21:06 We have so many different types of organizations represented on this call today that protect different communities of voters, but there's a huge overlap, disability does not discriminate, where represented among every other type of community.
15:21:26 We were hoping you could talk about the barriers you see with disabilities and also from intersectional perspective, ways you can work together especially on the ground, and I'm Glad Polling Pl., Access came up and talking about how the ADA applies.
15:21:37 Polling place closure has been something we've been doing a lot of work on as well.
15:21:43 >> NEW VOICE:  Hi everyone, happy to be here, my name is Marlene, I am a Latina woman with shoulder length hair was gray through it, and wearing black and gold glasses today with a burgundy blouse with white polka dots. I am the ED with national disability rights network, I'd like to think all of you know who we are.
15:22:06 Just in case I wanted to share with you that what we are is a nonprofit membership organization, and we actually are federally mandated with… Which is important for the work we do. It gives us access in many areas that not other agencies have with our access authority.
15:22:25 Our organization is made up of members from the protection and advocacy system along with the client assistance programs, and real advocate on behalf of people with disabilities, and collectively we are truly the largest provider of legal services to persons with disabilities in the United States and throughout the US territories.
15:22:48 Through our work we use different ways to advocate for the rights of people with disabilities, mediate, negotiate, file administered of complaints, we sue, and we also either individually or to bring about systemic change.
15:23:04 Our goal is to ensure, to pushback on any rights violations that would impact directly or indirectly, persons with disabilities. One of those things is the voting rights of every single individual, but especially those with disabilities.
15:23:19 We are made up of 57 member agencies, I previously indicated, we are in every state US territory in the DC, but we also have a Native American protection and advocacy agency in the four corners out on the West Coast.
15:23:37 Each and every one of us pays a significant role in making sure rights of people disabilities are protected through our legislative and policy advocacy, but also the systemic work that we do, because time and time again, we have seen throughout the history of our nation the fact that there are marginalized voices.
15:23:58 Those voices include those in the disability community but also intersects with other communities because individuals with disabilities are represented across the board, so for us it's very important to continue to do this voting rights work and work hand-in-hand with our fellow colleagues representing all communities and making sure that the approach that we take is intersectional at all times.
15:24:23 For our PNA's, they are funded by several grant, but the most important grant that we do is the Pava grant, and this one is key to all the election work that we are doing. Not only at the national level but at the state level, and through this program, which was only established in 2003, and is part of what we call the help America vote act which was established in 2002, not too long under this program are PNA's have a mandate.
15:25:07 In other words they are required, our protection and advocacy is PNA, just notice the comment in the chat, PNA stands for protection and advocacy, and our agencies are – have this mandate to help ensure that individuals with disabilities can participate fully, that's key, fully, and the electoral process.
15:25:29 We do this through voter education, training appalling officials, registration drives, and also through polling place accessibility surveys, and it's our PNA's on the ground each state that work hand-in-hand many times with independent living… With the ILC along with maybe counsel to conduct these polling accessibility service.
15:25:47 Where they necessary, well we already heard. There are traditional barriers to voting, and those barriers could be accessibility, physical, structural accessibility issues that we find at polling sites.
15:26:08 During COVID I was in Massachusetts leading the Massachusetts PNA, I can't say that. One of the things that I did was I traveled throughout the state conducting accessibility surveys during COVID, and as we know many of the polling places were moved from one location to another because they were consolidating polling sites.
15:26:27 Time and time again I would go into a facility that was inaccessible, physically and accessible. They also didn't have the voting machine that is used and they would say well, we don't have it here, it's in the basement, we didn't bring it out, it's in the old facility.
15:26:53 There's no one here in this community that's blind that we need to use it, and time and time again the disability community was an afterthought. We are on the front lines as PNA's to ensure we are raising awareness, and we're ensuring that every polling site is made accessible to voters with disabilities, but to anyone.
15:27:13 When we make a facility accessible for everyone, then everyone wins. That's very important, and I think as we are moving towards the presidential election next year, one of the intersectional issues that comes to mind that was a concern even before COVID, right, but now we're seeing it more within person voting is its increasing.
15:27:37 We are seeing the mass closure of polling places, and these are being closed when jurisdictions with large percentages of racial minority voters, but they are blaming the Americans With Disabilities Act for the reason why they are closing these facilities, because they're claiming a local mother not accessible. That's great, make accessible, but don't shut them down.
15:28:06 Especially when we know that they are being shut down in communities where we already have individuals residing in the community that have been marginalized to begin with, they have been denied access to voting. Now you are using the ADA as a way to shut down the polling places in those jurisdictions Dr.
15:28:26 And DR and actually did a report on this and what we found is jurisdictions that claim they have to close the polling places based on the ADA haven't really talked to the disability community. They can't even produce any DOJ ADA compliant surveys, they are just not doing what they should be doing to inform themselves of what the issues are.
15:28:53 They are just taking this approach, under shutting it down and we are going to use ADA as a reason for it. For us within the disability community it's upsetting, because time and time again we are not being spoken to, our opinions are not being sought, and we are not being given an opportunity to be at the table.
15:29:15 For us, the closing of these polling sites, we view it as a smokescreen for voter suppression and we want to help you stop it when it comes… Where you reside, so we are here in all 50 states and US territories.
15:29:39 If you are aware that something like this is taking place in your community, and you don't have your contact with your protection and advocacy agency in your state, feel free to go to our website and we will drop in the website link and go down to the middle of the page where it will say you will find help in your state or territory and you can find the state agency that exists where you reside.
15:30:10 So what I would love for everyone to understand is that DOJ, neither DOJ nor the disability community ever asks for a mass closure of polling places as a solution. We will always ask for ADA compliance, and we are always here to help make sure that every facility is ADA compliant.
15:30:20 The closing polling sites makes it less accessible for all voters, and we are all in this together, and we have to keep that in mind, so we need to continue raising the voices of our community, we need to work across the aisle with non-disability rights agencies, because it's all about her civil rights.
15:30:42 I'm so happy to see so many individuals on this call today because we are stronger when we work together and I know that hopefully through all of this today, we can continue to work together to push back on any closures and to ensure that everyone can exercise their right to vote independently and privately.
15:31:06 >> NEW VOICE:  Thank you. Pole closures are such a great example of why we should be doing this work together, because they blame us, they blame people with disabilities that they are closing in jurisdictions that have a high percentage of black and brown voters.
15:31:23 They are dividing us in suppressing the vote and then dividing the folks that are there to protect the vote.
15:31:29 I think that's really important, I did find a link in the chat to find the PNA where you are, and the link to the report that Marlene represents… Referenced as well. You know what Macy, can we sneak you in right now, let's do it.
15:31:41 >> NEW VOICE:  Yeah I had just a quick question, I'm in a state that uses a lot of churches as polling places and we have a problem, too, and the government says reasonably they can't use their money to fix the ADA issues that exists at the churches because they are churches.
15:32:02 What would be an argument… Or response to using that as an excuse to avoid making any changes?
15:32:12 >> NEW VOICE:  That is a great question. Before I just start talking away, do any of our panelists want to take a shot at answering that one? I see Jennifer right away.
15:32:23 >> NEW VOICE:  One solution is identify another…
15:32:37 >> NEW VOICE:  That's true. I know election officials that are good at this get really creative. There's a great example coming out of Alabama in which it was a church, it was being used as a polling site, very important church to the community, a historic black church in that community.
15:33:04 The voters were very proud of the fact they voted there as there should be, and it wasn't necessarily a suitable alternative close by, and I know that this example because the PNA in Alabama was involved, the elections officials were able to get… If needed a ramp. They were able to get lumber donated fermented box store.
15:33:12 They got a volunteer group. They put a permanent ramp on the church that made it accessible not just for elections but every day of the year for free, so if you talk to the disability community can help you come up with solutions and good creative solutions to either found a better location or try to adapt a location to that.
15:33:40 Any other responses to that one, otherwise…
15:33:40 >> NEW VOICE:  Can I jump in? This is Maria. Two things. One, states fund religious institutions all the time. If you look at our child welfare system, much of the state funding goes to things like Catholic charities to help support auto option services.
15:34:04 So I think you can see in other instances where state funding has gone to religious institutions in order to promote access to services and community integration, but another creative solution would be that the state fund temporary fixes.
15:34:28 Maybe they are not funding a renovation to the church itself but they are purchasing temporary rants that can be placed at churches and other polling locations that need these investments around accessibility.
15:34:47 Again, temporary tools like temporary ramps or railings that aren't permanent fixtures in these buildings and can be used in other polling places across the county for example.
15:34:51 >> NEW VOICE:  That's a very common solution to a lot of these polling place accessibility issues, the temporary measures, portable ramps, etc.
15:35:21 >> NEW VOICE:  The thing I love about that is that elections officials can also purchase those things and have their own kit, and deploy it where it's needed.
15:35:22 Polling places change, one becomes less accessible or you start using a new location, it's amazing what you can accomplish with orange traffic cones and duct tape, but you able those supplies to deploy them when you need.
15:35:33 I do want to point out in the chat this is incredible, someone's who's here today does government relations for the Episcopal Church and this is something they're working on right now, encouraging churches to serve as polling places but also working on the accessibility issue, because the ADA and churches are completed situation.
15:35:50 You can definitely expect to hear from you very soon as a matter of fact, but keeping us moving as well, we are going to go next to Maria town who is the president CEO of American Association of people with disabilities, Maria, take it away.
15:36:02 >> NEW VOICE:  Thank you so much, thank you everyone for being here today. IQ Leslie parole for your leadership in getting this organized, my name is Maria Town, Pres. and CEOof… Dedicated to increasing the political and economic power of the more than 61 million disabled people across the United States.
15:36:34 A APD works on a range of issues, advocacy and programming, but for this meeting I wanted to specifically point out our initiative with… Register educate and vote, use your power, and through rev up we have 32 disability state voting coalitions and you all will hear from Jessica Mathis later who helps to lead rev up Georgia.
15:36:58 These coalitions do everything from  hosting nonpartisan candidate issue forums, voter registration efforts, some polling place assessments, one of the things that I've been delighted to hear this afternoon is just how all of our work together reinforces and complements one another.
15:37:22 I wanted to talk about two issues that we see frequently that are creating accessibility barriers for disabled voters and their families and those who love them.
15:37:38 One is around issues related to who can assist disabled voters at polls. So we are seeing across the nation states seeking to limit what kinds of assistance disabled voters can receive when they try to go vote October reefs seen some states like Ohio that have said that only a close family relative can assist a disabled motor when they go to vote.
15:38:12 Many people with disabilities just like everybody else may not have close family ties but they may have a friend or a direct support worker or caregiver who can support them. We've also seen states like Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama attempt to criminalize and find providing assistance to disabled voters.
15:38:48 When you think about people with disabilities and how diverse our community is, specifically the demographics of care workers in direct support workers who might be assisting disabled people to get to the polls, stay online, and actually cast their ballot, they are primarily women of color, so these attempts to restrict who can assist disabled voters at the polls are not only potentially curtailing the number of disabled people attempting to vote.
15:39:09 They are also suppressing the votes of women of color, and as Marlene and Michelle have Artie indicated, our struggles are connected. Multiple identities as people, we are seeing all of these attacks on the right to vote really impact folks across the board but I wanted to raise that specific… One of the things we are doing at a APD is making sure that in all of these states…
15:39:40 The people have clear guidance on who can assist them, and I know that ND RN has also worked on this issue, and get guidance from the Department of Justice saying that disabled people have a choice to assist them… It cannot be an employer, union representative.
15:40:03 I want to talk a little bit about remote voting. During the pandemic we saw many states expand access for remote voting, and recite historic levels of voter participation including the disability community.'s
15:40:19 I will note there is typically been a 6 to 7% participation gap amongst voters with disabilities compared to voters without disabilities, and that remained true even in the 2020 election, even though a larger number of disabled people participated in that election than ever before.
15:40:41 All the numbers rose and that participation gap remains the same in part because many of these systemic issues like Marlene has discussed persisted. So I want to… When we talk about remote voting there are things like vote by mail but there is also electronic voting and electronic ballot return.
15:41:08 In the past few years especially since the 2016 election we've seen a greater emphasis on the need for paper ballots, many perceive it as a more secure voting option, but for few blue disabilities, especially folks who are blind low-vision or have his abilities like mine, cerebral palsy, that affect their fine motor skills and ability to sign in all developed.
15:41:34 Paper ballots can be very inaccessible and are federal military and overseas veterans empowerment act states that electronic balance be provided to our military members serving overseas.
15:41:49 31 states including DC and the Virgin Islands although people to return absentee ballots by mail but only seven states allow return by online portal. For voters with disabilities 11 states allow returns via fax, nine states allow returns via email, and only four states allow returns via online portal.
15:42:21 For many disabled people electronic ballot casting and return is the most accessible option and yet we still see attempts to limit this option across the United States, and what we are pushing for is not for everyone to have access to electronic voting all the time that we begin to invest in systems that don't force us to choose between security and accessibility.
15:42:52 For all people to be able to cast an independent and anonymous but ballot we didn't miss many options as possible and all those options including electronic voting should be secure and accessible.
15:43:09 I know we are running low on time so I'm going to pass it off to my colleague Kelly from ND RN, but if you would like to talk more about electronic voting and remote voting generally for disabled people, please don't hesitate to contact me and I will put some links in the chat.
15:43:31 >> NEW VOICE:  Thank you, I appreciate that. I did also drop a link in the chat to how you can get involved with rev up.
15:43:40 Please share some resources with us, and with that I will pass it off to Kelly who coordinates accessible voting, I was hoping you could set us up by touching on with that coalition is, all of our guests today may not be aware of it even that they might really want to work with us.
15:43:54 Then talk a little bit about some of the issues with the coalition going into 2024.
15:44:10 >> KELLY ISRAEL: I want to start by saying I work with the national coalition on accessible voting as its coordinator. We are a group of motion flee… Mostly national but also regional, mostly disability rights organizations who are working to maintain and expand voting access for people with disabilities through policy.
15:44:30 Unlike rev up which is mainly focus on the power of the disability boat as a whole, and this is building up capacity in those multiple states and territories, we want to mainly focus on the laws, policies, restrictions, and regulations that either act as barriers to voting or enhance voting.
15:44:53 We want to change voting rights policy nationally and in states that impedes access to people with disabilities. That's a large part of what we want to do. We also just want to space to collaborate because there aren't that many spaces where national disability rights organizations and some civil rights organizations can show to share Intel on policies that are coming down on voting.
15:45:27 So the NCA via acts is that space, and if you want to show up, if you're a member for the national organization, or a regional organization, we'd be happy to have you, it would be great.'s new paragraph anyway, to give an example, there are all kinds of laws and bills then act as direct barriers to voting for marginalized people but I really want to highlight one that was mentioned by Maria during the first part of her presentation.
15:46:01 The kinds of bills that criminalize assisting disabled voters. It's important to note that assistance is a really broad category. It can mean anything from getting email and ballot to helping them drive to the polling place to assisting and filling out the actual ballot to physically casting a filled out ballot for someone with mobility impairment to speaking to the poll workers and going to the polling place with a person with a disability to help them navigate.
15:46:41 By criminalizing this broad range of behavior, these bills that criminalize voter assistance are actively suppressing the disabled vote in multiple ways. An example bill of one of these that I want to highlight is a bill in Mississippi.
15:47:11 The bill is known as Senate Bill 2358. A bill is when a law is called before it becomes a law, but if you do decide to get into policy or are already involved in policy, you should note that sometimes we refer to laws that have passed still as bills, because it makes them easier turf or two so we don't have to cite the Mississippi code every time we talk about it.
15:47:25 That particular law targeted supporters to help people with disabilities return completed mail-in ballots. For example a person with significant mobility disabilities, someone who's paralyzed for example, might need someone to help the male in the completed ballot. Limited to just family members, caregivers, household members, election officials, and postal workers Dr.
15:47:53 These laws have a lot of really problematic implications and can deprive people of the ability to vote.
15:48:04 The one I want to highlight is that since it is unclear what the Mississippi law means by caregiver it could completely exclude nursing home or long-term care facility staff. That might end up completely excluding people from the vote who reside in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
15:48:26 This is a large population of people with disabilities, a very underserved population, really under utilizes the right to vote because they don't have the means to do so. Often they represent people who weren't able to get direct community-based services and supports, so they are often people who lack bandwidth capacity and resources.
15:49:04 Sometimes we are talking about low income people as well, the law exclude social workers who are sometimes the only consistent force of positive advocacy and support in the life of a disabled person.
15:49:04 Particularly voters with mental health disabilities and many people with disabilities who are low income people of color, as a result member of these… Many members of these group may lose the ability to vote, since friends can't help you vote, and also advocacy and community groups can't help.
15:49:25 Community groups are the highest source of voter registration marginalized groups including people disabilities and people of color.
15:49:37 The way these laws are designed as the most vulnerable disabled people, without families, rely on community support organizations and social workers, voters with long-term care facilities in nursing homes, many of whom are low-income voters of color, are deprived of their fundamental rights.
15:49:55 Organizations that help them vote, sometimes small organizations, are criminalized. I want to go into a little bit of detail about the chilling effects of these laws.
15:50:14 Voter suppression laws don't just criminalize and prohibit conduct, they also sell confusion about the law and undermine confidence in voting itself. For example let's say there's a community organization in a low income community that has historically done everything it could to help its members vote. Let's say the organization hears about this law and even before it passes they stop helping people vote because they're scared they'll violate the law.
15:50:48 They know that if it criminalizes assistance, then they don't want to do anything that could be construed as that so they stopped providing information and support to disabled voters, they stop helping them vote, because what if just telling disabled voters how to vote counts as assistance? Most people who learn about this law never actually read it or know what's in it.
15:51:17 The law will have negative impacts despite that. Anyway, I'm being told to wrap up, sorry about that, so what can be done about this? Several organizations including disability rights of Mississippi filed a lawsuit challenging this law as violating Section 208 of the help America vote act and Section 208 lets anyone aside from your employer help you vote.
15:51:44 This is only one case of laws that directly suppress the disabled vote or have that effect. We want to know about laws and policies in your state that harm disabled voters.
15:51:45 I definitely highlight Marlene's presentation on PNA's, talk to them if you like your rights are being violated, you can find your localpna@mdrand.org, if you participated me up, sorry for the darkness, passing it away back to Michelle.
15:52:05 >> NEW VOICE:  Thank you. We are getting close on time so I do she… Do you have a question for us?
15:52:13 >> NEW VOICE:  I do have a question, can you hear me? Back to the architectural barriers at polling locations, I used to be… Trust me I love the idea of building temporary roofs, we built hundreds of them for large elections, but churches especially didn't care too much for the aluminum rims we built. The one thing we found was schools, schools were not a fan of the temporary ramps at all.
15:52:47 They would block the drop-off and pickup aisle, so one question I have was like aside from during election times does the DOJ or the civil rights division have any plans of like getting schools on board to make permanent changes so we do need these temporary ramps, that's one thing that…
15:53:17 I feel it could be fixed systemically because it's a school/district problem but I didn't know if someone had already started looking into this.
15:53:23 >> NEW VOICE:  Jennifer can you speak to that?
15:53:27 >> NEW VOICE:  Not necessarily with respect to voting but yes, you're right that there wouldn't be this widespread problem with voting accessibility to the extent that it stems from an accessibility of schools schools actually more broadly insured accessibility.
15:53:55 Which is important for other reasons besides voting obviously, some kids with disabilities go to school, they want to learn, not be at risk.
15:54:06 I will say I think we are about to come out with a video presentation that is just focused on accessibility, physical accessibility issues in schools. For what it's worth I think that's going to come out shortly, it just needs to be captioned.
15:54:45 >> NEW VOICE:  That's a great answer, thank you. Okay. With the time we have left, Jessica Mathis with robust storage, take us home, tell us what the struggle to protect the right to vote for people with disabilities looks like on the ground.
15:54:52 >> NEW VOICE:  I am Jessica Mathis, an African-American woman. I have a pink bandanna on my head and I have a classic rev up shirt on, and I have been working in voter registration since 2018.
15:55:14 I came into rev up in 2020, and I was actively involved in the 2020 elections as far as making sure that people with disabilities in the state of Georgia statewide have their absentee ballots.
15:55:30 Just like Miss Maria and Ms. Israel said, there are plenty of laws that restrict assistance of people with disabilities as far as the absentee ballot is concerned. I live in Savannah Georgia which is in Chatham County Georgia and we have 159 counties.
15:56:07 I am what is known as a volunteer voter registrar which means I can go out into my communities and help people with disabilities and people who have stayed in assisted living facilities and educate them and help them feel… Fill their ballots out.
15:56:33 But because the new laws it has heavily restricted that, we are not allowed to mail out any absentee ballots. We can help them fill it out but it has to be turned in by either a family member or a close caregiver.
15:56:56 The thing about it is like… Miss Killian Miss Maria town just finished stating, it depends on how you define caregiver. If you do not have access to close family ties, then how do you get your absentee ballot mailed in when you don't even have access to an envelope or PO Box.
15:57:36 One of the major things that is affected us… And the time barriers, people have to turn these things in. It went from being hundred and 80 days to like two weeks and a month and 1/2 before in the election. It's very difficult to try to get voters involved in voters engaged because of the level of time it takes to get out there.
15:58:18 For me personally since I write transit, it takes me a whole day just to code to an assisted living care and help them fill out a ballot for if I'm going to vote for myself.
15:58:41 It takes me a whole day, I have to get up at like 8 o'clock in the morning and I don't if sometimes until after 12. So I was just looking forward to this presidential election, I would just say that you need to keep up with your states voting dates, voting times, get with your family members, and have all your backup plans in place.
15:59:18 Plan out your voting day. Because the way that the other speakers like Miss Mathis and Marlene and Miss Maria town has been speaking with all these restrictions and all these laws, you never know what's can happen. It's going to have to process… The process of voting is going to have to be extremely strategic.
15:59:49 >> NEW VOICE:  That's true, great point Jessica, thank you. I know we are almost at the hour but I see one more hand up, can we sneak one question in?
15:59:49 >> NEW VOICE:  Hi everybody, thanks for letting me ask my question. I am wondering what can be done on voting day when people encounter troubles, if they need immediate help because they're being denied the ability to vote, what can be done at that moment?
16:00:18 >> NEW VOICE:  One thing I can stress right away as there are disability rights organizations part of the election protection organization, people disabilities can call into election protection hotlines on election day to get immediate assistance and we actually tend to fully integrated networks into those efforts.
16:00:38 If volunteers get a really specific call that's hard for them to answer because sometimes this gets really intricate they should know actually… They should know to help out with these issues, voters can also call organizations… A lot of them are set up to take calls or even have a hotline set up to take calls directly on election day as well Dr.
16:01:04 Did I miss anything important there guys?
16:01:04 >> NEW VOICE:  I would also like to answer the questions, this is why a say that you're planning a voting day needs to be someone strategic and planned, because if you get there on that day you might need to have an advocate with you just to stay there and make sure that you're making all the right phone calls and that you're making contact with the voter protection agencies he might want want to get in contact with some independent living to see if you can
16:01:55 put anything together in terms of access or writing a complaint or whatever like they've talked about. In this conference. And then thirdly you may just want to do community advocacy at this point, get a group of people together on that day to just kind of ask people how their voting was,, are there any improvements that need to be made or is there anything that they need help with
16:02:48 . Always check with your state laws to see who can help and who can't.
16:02:49 >> NEW VOICE:  That's a really awesome .10 done because one of the things that we are hoping you'll take from this today, whether or not your member of the issues we raise or what to do about them,the most important thing you can remember is to talk to the disability community.
16:03:00 Be in conversation with us, we don't expect you to have the level of expertise we have about our own community. We want to help you with that so we would love for you to get in touch with rev up chapters, PNA's, and be talking with us, let's have a conversation going all the time. I saw one more question in the chat if curbside voting is offered everywhere.
16:03:20 It's not, it's determined by the state or jurisdiction, I see Maria has a hand up as well.
16:03:28 >> NEW VOICE:  I wanted to add one thing to the last verbal question which is that I think it's very important that people become educated on how they can request a ballot to vote in emergency. In the disability community we have a saying that anyone can become disabled… The disability community is the only demographic community that you can enter at any point in your life.
16:03:52 One day if we are lucky enough to live good long lives we are all going to be disabled. Anything can happen on election day including a carwrecks, you might get very sick, and you might find yourself in a hospital or an emergency scenario.
16:04:14 And that should not deprive you of your right to vote, each state has a different process for requesting emergency ballots and how the needs to get handled. But that kind of information is just as important as basic registration information and deadlines.
16:04:25 You never know what's going to happen especially on election day.
16:04:26 >> NEW VOICE:  That's also a great point and this on. No matter what community it is that you serve and what voters your reaching out to, people with disability's are absolutely part of that community, or members of that community could become people with disabilities at any time so it's important to know some of this information and where to send people to get more information.
16:05:06 So that's another reason we really want to partner with you all to do this part. So thank you so much to all of our panelists for all the amazing information they provided, and anyone who is really active and chatted asking questions today, and with that I will pass it back to my colleague Leslie to wrap us up.
16:05:06 >> LESLIE PROLL: I don't really have much more to say, this was fantastic, Thank you everybody. We will make the recording available[Coughing] excuse me, I'm so choked up because it was such a great presentation. But terrific start to this conversation. This is not it. We are just now entering the election year next month.
16:05:36 We will be in touch with you and definitely want to re-create this space so that everybody can contribute and participate. Thanks so much.
16:05:55 >> KELLY ISRAEL: Thank you, for keeping it real and getting us together.
16:05:56 >> NEW VOICE:  Thank you for everyone inviting me to this event.