Election officials around the country are hard at work getting voters registered and registrations updated as the Nov. 6 General Election approaches. In some states, the deadline for early and absentee voting has already passed. That deadline doesn’t concern me, though. I always vote on Election Day, right there at the polls. Here’s how that works:
- I’m handed a headset, and a poll worker guides me to a special voting machine equipped with speech software
- That text-to-speech software translates the candidate selections on the ballot into spoken choices
- A special keypad enables voters like me, who are blind, to choose our candidates by touch
- Our selections are confirmed by voice again before the ballot is cast
Some friends are astonished to hear all I have to do to cast my vote. “Isn’t that a pain? Why don’t you just vote absentee?” I answer with a shrug. For me, there’s no substitute for the feel of a voting device in your hand, the sound of your vote actually registering.
And then there’s this: In the not-too-distant past people with disabilities did stay home, not just on voting day, but perpetually. We can never go back to those days, and voting publicly is one way to help ensure we don’t. I like to think it means something for other voters to see someone like me, a citizen with a disability, exercising the same basic right that they do, voting in private without public assistance.
Millions of Americans with disabilities share this ambition. We can’t let others forget about us. One way to do that: let them see us, out there with everyone else, casting a vote in November.