Disability Voting News: April 23, 2025
Welcome to The Accessible Voting Booth for April 23, 2025. Last week, this newsletter surpassed 100 subscribers (125, to be exact). Thank you for subscribing, and if you’re new here, welcome! I created The Accessible Voting Booth because I was desperate to analyze how proposed legislation is impacting disability voting rights in 2025, especially at the state level. While I can’t exactly call it a “pleasant” experience to analyze so many restrictive policies like documentary proof of citizenship and the proposed cuts to Protection and Advocacy agencies, I think this work is important.
It’s also given me a way to continue to use my 10 years of experience in disability voting rights and update my weirdly encyclopedic knowledge of state voting assistance laws. I hope that someday in the future, that knowledge might be of interest to some organization that would like to put it to use. Yes, that is blatant self-promotion. I am very actively searching for more employment so I can afford my dog's crinkle duck toy obsession. He can rip a toy up in minutes. Oh, and also health insurance. I need to afford that too.
If the tariffs hit the dog toy industry too hard, I’m in trouble.
This week, I’m diving into the leaked HHS memo that proposes cutting funding for Protection and Advocacy agencies and how that would impact disability voting rights work around the country. Plus, we’ll discuss the 2024 Election Assistance Commission Clearinghouse Award winners and changes to voter assistance at the polls in Arkansas.
HHS Reorganization would end federal funding of Protection and Advocacy agencies, some of our biggest voting rights advocates.
Last week, a 64-page leaked memo on the reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services proposed significant funding cuts to several disability programs including Protection and Advocacy agencies, or P&As. If these cuts are enacted, we will lose our most dedicated and reliable disability voting rights advocates in every state, along with organizations that have spent decades upholding disability rights and investigating abuse.
What are Protection and Advocacy Agencies?
P&As are a network of organizations that provide services to people with disabilities. There are 57 P&As, one for every state and territory, and the Native American Disability Law Center. P&As were established by an act of Congress in 1975 in response to the exposé on Willowbrook State School, an institution where disabled people were living in appalling conditions.
P&As have the access authority to investigate abuse and neglect in nursing homes and institutions, pursue litigation to protect the rights of people with disabilities, help people with disabilities access assistive technology, and also engage in other advocacy for disability rights. P&As are on the front lines of enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability rights laws. Much of P&As’ work is accomplished through nine federally funded programs. Among them: Protection and Advocacy for Voting Access, or PAVA, which was established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to improve accessibility and ensure that voters with disabilities can exercise their rights.
The HHS Budget Document Proposes Cutting P&A Funding
As reported by Mother Jones journalist Julia Métraux on Monday, federal funding makes up the bulk of most P&As’ budgets. Disability Rights California’s Executive Director Andy Imparato is quoted as saying that most P&As are over 90% federally funded, and only a few large P&As like Disability Rights California have a more significant amount of alternate funding sources. The HHS memo proposes cutting funding for many of P&As’ core programs, such as the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities, which was the first P&A program established in the 1970s to protect the rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Page 47 of the memo lists “Voting Access for People with Disabilities” as a program elimination. This is the line item for PAVA. Even the few P&As that receive substantial non-federal funding would no longer be able to continue their voter access work.
The Impact of PAVA
P&As have protected voting rights for people with disabilities through PAVA for years. PAVA enables P&As to support voters with disabilities, educate election officials, train poll workers and volunteers, and provide technical assistance on voting equipment. It gives P&As the access authority to enter polling places and evaluate accessibility barriers. For Fiscal Year 2025, the president’s budget requested $10 million to facilitate these PAVA grants. The 2025 budget justification lists examples of how these grants have improved voter access around the country:
Disability Rights Florida and Access the Vote Florida published information on accessible options for voting by mail, distributing 2,500 voter information brochures including in Braille.
Disability Rights South Dakota trained 140 local election officials on election accessibility at the state’s bi-annual training conference.
The Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program facilitated social media broadcasts informing people with disabilities on how to operate voting machines and ask for assistance at the polls.
PAVA grants ensure that P&As around the country can operate voting rights hotlines on Election Day to support voters with disabilities, assist them with questions, and document any access barriers they experience so that they can work with election officials to fix those barriers. While the Election Protection Coalition and other voting hotlines exist, P&As have specialized knowledge on accessibility and disability voting rights and are more equipped to handle questions from disabled voters. P&As can also respond to complaints from voters with disabilities by following up with election officials to address and remediate access barriers, a process that takes time, commitment, and specialized knowledge of disability rights laws.
Around the country, P&As are doing critically important work to protect voting rights. They are the only organizations I know of that work in every state, consistently, to ensure people with disabilities have the right to vote. That work is made possible by the reliable stream of PAVA funding. While many other disability rights organizations like centers for independent living work on voting rights, that work often depends on the size of the organization, its budget, its access to private foundation grants, and the timing of elections. They have many priorities and don’t have dedicated voting rights funding like the PAVA program, so their ability to work on voting rights often fluctuates. CILs also serve specific counties within states, while P&As serve the entire state.
If this HHS reorganization happens, we lose our most dedicated, knowledgeable, and reliable disability voting rights experts in every state and territory. I know many of the PAVA advocates who are working tirelessly to improve disability voting rights in their states. They are voting accessibility subject matter experts, supporting both election officials and voters with disabilities and facilitating dialogue between election officials and the voters they serve. They hold state and local election officials accountable for improving voting accessibility when voters experience access barriers or discrimination.
As Métraux reports, this budget proposal would have to gain Congressional approval, and if the executive branch unilaterally tries to enact this proposal, it will likely face legal action from P&As, state developmental disability councils, and many other organizations that would lose funding under this reorganization. Disability advocates are mobilizing to fight these proposed cuts.
After that distressing news, I think we all deserve a dog picture. Here’s Oliver demonstrating his crinkle duck obsession.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission announces 2024 Clearinghouse Awards winners. (via EAC)
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has announced its winners of the 2024 Clearinghouse Awards, or “Clearies.” Established in 2016 to promote best practices in elections, they are like the Oscars for election nerds (minus the wealth and the glamour). Of course, my favorite category is “Accessibility: Best Practices for Improving Accessibility for Voters with Disabilities.” (Fun fact: a sample ballot accessibility toolkit I wrote for the National Council on Independent Living won an award in this category for 2019).
This year, there were five Clearies winners for accessibility best practices:
Charleston County, South Carolina’s Board of Voter Registration and Elections established the Voter Accessibility Advisory Committee to provide advice and recommendations to the board on matters relating to voter accessibility. The board is composed of several disability community members and representative organizations. Their work has included developing a checklist for evaluating polling place accessibility and training poll workers on how to properly assist voters with disabilities who use ballot-marking devices and voters with service animals.
Floyd County Elections, Georgia conducted a Voter Accessibility Town Hall in partnership with the Northwest Georgia Center for Independent Living. During this town hall, they educated voters with disabilities about their voting rights and options to vote, demonstrated the accessible voting equipment, and provided information on policies that support accessible voting.
Salt Lake County Clerk Election Division, Utah conducted Try Before You Vote: Accessible Voting Outreach. They traveled to events geared toward the disability community and provided opportunities for voters with disabilities to test out their three methods of accessible voting. These events informed voters about their choices and rights, reduced uncertainty, and allowed them to directly engage election officials about their questions.
The South Carolina State Election Commission, in collaboration with Disability Rights South Carolina, created a series of instructional videos on the voting process with picture-in-picture American Sign Language and large captions. These videos inform voters about polling place accessibility and absentee voting.
The Washington Office of the Secretary of State - Elections Division partnered with state accessibility advocates and TVW.org to add American Sign Language and closed captioning to the statewide Video Voters’ Guide.
As a bonus: my other favorite Clearies category is “Creative and Original ‘I Voted’ Stickers.” This is always such a fun category as election offices often hold contests for community members to submit and vote on “I Voted” stickers. This year, we saw some disability representation!
Palm Beach County was awarded for two “I Voted” stickers created in partnership with Pyramid, Inc., an organization that provides visual and performing arts training programs for individuals with disabilities. The first sticker features a pink flamingo, palm trees, a sunset, and oranges, with an American Sign Language “I” for the “I Voted.”
The second features palm trees on a blue horizon, an ASL “I” for “I Voted,” and above “Voted” are Braille dots spelling “voted.”
Image Credit: Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, Florida
Arkansas enacts new restrictions on individuals assisting voters with disabilities (via The Markup).
In the April 9 Accessible Voting Booth, I covered Arkansas SB 479, legislation that would restrict who may assist voters with disabilities within the polling place. Unfortunately, this legislation has now been signed into law by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. This law requires anyone who assists a voter with disabilities to be at least 18 years old, present an approved form of identification, and have their name recorded as it appears on their ID. This law will restrict the choices of voters with disabilities when it comes to receiving assistance from someone they trust.
As I mentioned before, many states fail to educate voters on rules around voter assistance, so many voters will not be aware of this change in the rules when they show up to the polls with the person they choose to assist them. Organizations that conduct voter education in Arkansas will have to work hard to educate voters with disabilities about this change.
Arkansas is one of the few states that does not have a state-level webpage dedicated to informing voters with disabilities about their rights and accessible voting options. In the 2024 election, 43 states and the District of Columbia had a voter assistance webpage for voters with disabilities either on their Secretary of State’s website or the state board of election’s website. Some of these pages are very comprehensive, like Alaska, which has a comprehensive page with accessibility assistance options and rights, accessible voting equipment information, ASL voter information, special needs voting (a specific program for voters who need someone to deliver and return their ballot for them), audio and text information on ballot measures and candidate statements, and procedures for registering complaints if a voter’s rights are violated. Other pages are simpler, such as Kentucky’s site which lists disability voting options with a few bullet points.
Arkansas’s Secretary of State website does not have a page for voters with disabilities. Even their FAQ page does not list any questions about voter accessibility options or disability voting rights. So it is likely that this change in election law restricting voter assistance will not be well publicized by the Secretary of State.
Thank you for reading this week’s edition of The Accessible Voting Booth! I’ll be back next week with more updates. As always, if you’d like to support the newsletter and my work, here’s how:
Hire me! If you or someone you know is looking to hire a disability civic engagement expert, please reach out. I’m also available for communications and administrative work through my LLC, Landmark Virtual Assistance.
Leave me a tip. Thank you for supporting my work!
Head over to support Disability Victory and our work in 2025.
