#CripTheVote - Voting and Autism

It's voting day in Illinois. Today I'm going to vote in my first consequential presidential primary of my life. In all other primaries since 1992, the decision had been pretty much made by the time the primary got to me (except in 2008. IL was consequential, but Obama was obviously going to win his home state, so ...).

I'm most excited about voting for Kim Foxx for Cook County States Attorney, hoping to throw out Anita Alvarez, who has not held bad cops accountable for their actions. 

Here's a piece from the Washington Post on a woman helping her autistic son register to vote. It mentions the hashtag #CripTheVote, which is nice to see. Twitter activism has real impact!

Recently, however, I noticed the Twitter hashtag #CripTheVote, which is a rallying call to political candidates to take note of this huge constituency. As a disability rights advocate, I retweeted dutifully. The shadow of sadness for Nat never quite cleared, though, and one day I found myself angry about it: Why couldn’t Nat vote? Who was to say that he couldn’t make such decisions for himself?