How Far Have We Come? Disability and Voting

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The 2023 APSA mini-conference on Disability and Politics demonstrated the depth and range of political topics regarding people with disabilities. This year’s proposed panel will build on some of the 2023 work by presenting new results regarding voting among people with disabilities. An estimated 38.3 million people with disabilities were eligible to vote in the United States in 2020, making them the largest minority group in the electorate. Furthermore, the number of people with disabilities has increased, and continues to increase, with the aging of the U.S. population and the continuing impact of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Prior studies have found lower voter turnout of people with disabilities, due to resource, recruitment, and psychological factors along with greater difficulties in exercising the right to vote. While some of the participation gap is due to factors such as lower education and income levels among people with disabilities, other factors, such as stigma and inaccessible voting systems also play an important role.

This panel presents new quantitative and qualitative data on voting behavior among people with disabilities. The first paper by Lisa Schur, Douglas Kruse, Mason Ameri, and Meera Adya analyzes data collected from nationally-representative surveys following the 2012, 2020, and 2022 elections, sponsored by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. These surveys, which contain large samples of eligible voters both with and without disabilities, asked a wide variety of questions about the voting experiences in these elections, including any difficulties encountered. Two key findings of this paper are that 1) difficulties in voting in polling places have declined since 2012, indicating greater accessibility, and 2) voter turnout among people with disabilities increased between 2018 and 2022 most strongly in states that made it easier to vote by mail, while turnout of people without disabilities was less affected. The results provide new evidence of the value of both accessible polling places and ease of voting by mail.

The second paper, by Joshua Thorp, delves into the psychology of voting by exploring subjective identification with disability. This paper uses data from two original national surveys of American adults with disabilities to derive a novel measure of subjective identification with disability and explore its relationship to vote choice and policy preferences.

The third paper, by Renée Edwards, Mason Ameri, Meera Adya, Cynthia Simon, and Victoria Coty, uses a qualitative approach to explore changes in voting experiences of people with disabilities over the two decades since the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed and became effective. The paper reports on six focus groups of 44 voters with disabilities, sponsored by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. While some focus group participants describe better experiences over time, continued confusion about the voting process and anxiety about crowded polling places were common themes.

Th fourth paper, by April Johnson, uses data from a large, nationally representative sample to replicate recent scholarship that finds commensurate levels of political interest, knowledge, and efficacy, traditional predictors of voter turnout, among both those who identify and those who do not identify as having a disability. The results largely replicate, though do show that the predictive power of these attitudes on voting behavior is significantly greater among individuals with disabilities, particularly when the effect is moderated by one’s current health status and economic conditions.

Taken together, these four papers provide new insights into how the voting experiences of people with disabilities have changed, and the challenges they continue to face.

Sub Unit

• Division 36: Elections and Voting Behavior

Individual Presentations

• Disability, Voter Turnout, and Voting Accessibility from 2012 to 2022 - Lisa Schur, Rutgers University-New Brunswick; Douglas Kruse, Rutgers University; Mason Ameri, Rutgers University; Meera Adya, Syracuse University

• Disability as a Political Identity - Joshua Thorp, University of Michigan

• Voting Experiences since HAVA: Perspectives of People with Disabilities - Renee D. Edwards, Rutgers University; Mason Ameri, Rutgers University; Meera Adya, Syracuse University

• Attitudes towards Institutional Legitimacy among Individuals with Disabilities - April A. Johnson

Chair

• Jennifer Leonor Erkulwater University of Richmond

Discussant

• Arthur Blaser Chapman University