Regina Connor, 75, of Smithfield, is legally blind and has never missed voting in an election since she was old enough to participate. She also serves on the Rhode Island Governor’s Commission on Disabilities, which helps educate voters and poll workers about accommodations. (Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current)
Regina Connor cast her ballot in Rhode Island’s Sept. 10 primary in minutes.
Hardly the norm in her 54 years as a registered voter. The 75-year-old Smithfield resident is legally blind.
“In the early days, there was no such thing as accessible voting,” Connor recalled.
For most of her time as a voter, Connor’s father served as her eyes, standing beside her in the voting booth and marking her ballot. In 2006, thanks to federal mandates included in the 2002 Help America Vote Act, Connor was finally able to mark her choices herself using a ballot-marking voting machine.
But the earliest machines were plagued by technological problems and poll workers who didn’t know how to set them up. Connor often waited upwards of an hour for problems to be fixed on Election Day.
“My feeling was they needed to address the problem, so I’ll wait to make them do what they need to do to correct it,” Connor, who also serves on the Rhode Island Governor’s Commission on Disabilities, said.
After decades of struggle, Connor finally considers the process nearly seamless, thanks to federal and state requirements and technological improvements. She is not alone. Lawmakers, election administrators and advocates for the disability community say Rhode Island, like most of the country, made major strides in voting access in recent years.
Even if it wasn’t always intentional.
“COVID really changed how we looked at voting for large groups of people,” said Kevin Nerney, executive director for the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council. “Giving the general public a much greater opportunity to vote had a huge impact on people with disabilities.”
A 2021 study by Rutgers University found that 17.7 million people with disabilities nationwide participated in the November 2020 elections. This marked a 5.9-percentage point increase in voter turnout among the disability community compared with 2016.
In Rhode Island, the surge in voter participation was even stronger, rising from 50% of disabled voters in 2016 to 62.6% in 2020, although the sample size was small, the study noted.
Pandemic-era voting measures that benefited voters with disabilities were further enhanced under a sweeping set of state voting reforms passed in 2022. The Let RI Vote Act enshrined early, in-person voting and expanded access to mail ballots, including reducing the deadline to apply for a braille or tactile ballot from 45 to 21 days before an election.
The same law also permanently eliminated the requirement for mail ballots to be signed by two witnesses or a notary, following a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 by watchdog groups including the American Civil Liberties Union. Most of the plaintiffs named in the complaint were people with serious disabilities who were unable to leave their home to get a notarized signature or witnesses on their mail ballots.
A separate 2022 law offered disabled and military voters the option to submit a mail ballot electronically. Together, these changes eliminated the transportation issues faced by many members of the disability community, who often rely on paratransit services.
“Having both the legislation and the litigation address the issue was kind of a one-two punch,” said Steven Brown, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island. “We’ve seen an explosion in mail ballot use.”
How many mail ballots were cast by voters with disabilities since the 2022 laws took effect has not been tracked, nor is there any data about disabled voter turnout after the 2020 election. Nerney said the Developmental Disabilities Council is working to gather information about what percentage of residents who receive disability services have registered to vote.
Rhode Island’s 2022 elections also marked the debut of new, ExpressVote marked ballot machines which featured better technology and enhanced usability. The machines, which are available at any polling place to anyone who wants to use them, were recently highlighted in a new YouTube video tutorial put together by the Rhode Island Department of State.
“It’s night and day technology,” said Rob Rock, deputy secretary of state. “We’re really excited about it and are getting good feedback from the disability community.”
Accessible parking remains an issue
But better technology and new laws are only as effective as the people who implement them. And despite ongoing education and training workshops in Rhode Island for local election administrators and poll workers, not everyone appears up to snuff on the mandates or logistics.
“It only takes one person to make great access, and the same is true the other way around,” said Kate Bowden, senior attorney for Disability Rights Rhode Island.
As part of its federal funding, the disability protection agency surveys Election Day polling places and documents infractions.
Bowden was still sifting through the reports from the Sept. 10 primary as of Thursday, but said she saw problems with van-accessible parking at three of the seven polling places she visited. Last year, during the 2023 special Congressional District 1 election, she noted one polling place that used the wrong door, requiring voters to climb a flight of stairs.
Most of the mistakes are due to misunderstanding or lack of education on the part of poll workers or local election administrators, and ideally, can be corrected quickly, Bowden said.
But for the hundreds of polling places that Bowden and her team, or other volunteers, are unable to visit, voters are left to know, and advocate for, their rights.
Miranda Oakley, a 36-year-old South Kingstown resident who is blind, only started voting independently using ballot-marking machines in the last six years, despite federal requirements for the machines starting in 2006. Oakley said poll workers didn’t seem to know about or understand the technology, so she brought a trusted companion to mark her ballot.
She now relished the opportunity to make the choice herself using the ExpressVote machine.
“Even if you trust someone 100%, there’s always a sense of a lack of privacy,” she said. “Everyone should have the right to vote in a way where they can do it independently.”
Especially now, when distrust and disinformation about election security runs rampant.
New box to check
In a nod to tighter election security, a law signed by Gov. Dan McKee in June now requires voters who cannot sign their name on a mail ballot application to indicate this, or have an assistant indicate it, by checking a box on the paperwork. Previously, voters who could sign the forms could mark an “X,” but there was no option for an assistant, nor threat of perjury if the chosen representative lied.
The legislation, introduced on behalf of the Rhode Island Board of Elections, brings Rhode Island in line with the rest of the states nationwide, said Miguel Nunez, executive director for the state elections board.
Rock named the change as an example of how the state has improved election security for all voters, including members of the disability community.
“I would argue that over the last election cycle, elections have become more secure than ever,” Rock said.
Everyone should have the right to vote in a way where they can do it independently.
– Miranda Oakley, 36, of South Kingstown, who is blind
Education remains the primary barrier to the ballot, an obstacle that advocates and state agencies continue to try to dismantle through in-person workshops and events, and online information.
Oakley also hosts a podcast, “Connecting through Conversation,” where she explains ways for the disabled community to participate in government through legislative testimony, and voting.
“Especially for people with disabilities, politicians need to hear from them and know they are worth taking the time for,” Oakley said.
Both Oakley and Connor lamented the sometimes-limited state paratransit system as a remaining obstacle to in-person voting for people with disabilities.
“Don’t even get me started on that, it’s a whole other problem,” Connor said.
Yet the headache of arranging transportation was not enough to stop her from showing up on Election Day, even with the option for voting by mail.
“I like to go on Election Day because then I really feel like part of the process,” she said.
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