Talk:Suffrage for Americans with disabilities

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Aad58. Peer reviewers: Brianaburroughs.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:54, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
Please find the outline of my proposed article on Voting and Persons with Disabilities within the United States:

Overview
The main focus of this article will serve to illustrate the main challenges that 33.7 million persons with disabilities face within the American electoral process. Specifically, the article will focus on access to polling information, physical access to polls, current and future laws that deal with the topic, and the moral implications regarding the varying levels of both physical and cognitive disabilities and the act of voting.

Political Engagement
Multiple sources report that persons with disabilities comprise one of the most disenfranchised groups within American society. As a result, Americans with both physical and cognitive disabilities are amongst the least politically engaged members of the electorate. For example, during the 2012 election cycle, 11% fewer persons with disabilities turned out to vote than their nondisabled counterparts.

Accessibility to Polls
A leading theory that attempts to explain the lack of political engagement within disabled communities deals primarily with access to polling places. In fact, many polling places are considered to be nearly entirely inaccessible to persons with disabilities. To this end, within the past several years, the Federal Election Commission has reported that more than 20,000 polling places across the nation are not fully accessible for disabled individuals, and in 1999, the New York Attorney General fewer than 10% of upstate polling facilities were fully compliant with state and federal laws.

The failure to comply with state and federal laws can manifest itself in many ways, but it typically results in a lack of functional wheelchair ramps, sparse placement of handicapped entrance signs, and generally inaccessible physical voting booths.