New election laws could create barriers for voters with disabilities

New election laws could create barriers for voters with disabilities

ASHINGTON - Teri Saltzman said she took her time to look over her ballot at home in Pflugerville, Texas, during the state's recent primary, using specialized glasses that magnified the small print.
But Saltzman, who is legally blind, still missed the lines on the envelope flap that required her to fill in identification numbers needed for election officials to count her vote.
"To this day, I am unsure that my vote was counted," said Saltzman, 59.
The addition of the lines was among the election changes lawmakers approved last year in Texas - one of several states where advocates say new laws could have an outsized impact on voters with disabilities. They worry that stricter identification requirements, restrictions on voting by mail, reducing the number of drop boxes and other changes could hurt access for people with disabilities in local and midterm elections.
"We're not usually the target of voter suppression. Often people with disabilities just get caught in the crosshairs,'' said Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager for the National Disability Rights Network.
Concerns about the fallout from those new laws come after turnout among voters with disabilities surged in the 2020 election. As election officials took steps to make the election safer during the pandemic, they also made it easier for people with disabilities to vote.
Nearly 62% of eligible voters with disabilities cast ballots in the 2020 election, up from about 56% in 2016, according to researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In all, about 17.7 million people with disabilities voted in 2020.
The share of people with disabilities who reported having a problem voting dropped from 26.1% in 2012 to 11.4% in 2020, according to the Rutgers study. Among voters who did not have a disability, it dropped from 7.4% to 6.4%.
But advocates fear those improvements have been short-lived. Several states adopted new voting restrictions in part in response to former President Donald Trump's false claims about a stolen 2020 presidential election. Opponents of those laws argue conservative lawmakers want to make it harder for people of color and other marginalized voters - who tend to vote Democratic - to vote after Democrats unexpectedly won states like Georgia and Arizona.
Supporters of the new laws, however, say they protect against voter fraud and aim to restore confidence in the election process.
"Those concerns are misplaced," Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., said of advocates.
He said many of the laws, including ones requiring more identification, led to higher voter turnout in states like Georgia and Indiana in part because voters had more faith in the system.
''There's this, unfortunately, generally high mistrust of the election process these days by members of both parties,'' von Spakovsky said. "The more you pu