Disability and Voting Turnout in 2016

Rutgers professors Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse have a new fact sheet on turnout from people with disabilities. Their "key points:"

• 6.0 million people with disabilities reported voting in the November 2016 elections.

• The voter turnout rate of people with disabilities was 6 percentage points lower than that of people without disabilities.

• Employed people with disabilities, however, were just as likely as employed people without disabilities to vote, suggesting that employment helps bring people with disabilities into mainstream political life.

• The voter registration rate of people with disabilities was 2 percentage points lower than that of people without disabilities. The lower voter turnout was due both to a lower registration rate among people with disabilities, and to lower turnout among those who are registered.

• If people with disabilities voted at the same rate as people without disabilities who have the same demographic characteristics, there would be about 2.2 million more voters.

Lots of barriers to voting for disabled Americans. Employment matters, though I suspect more of a correlation than causation here. Anyway, the data is useful. READ THE WHOLE THING.

I tend to want to see disability politicized, by which I do not mean made more partisan, but so that people vote based on disability related policy issues. I.e. people who voted to destroy Medicaid should be driven from office.

I previously covered some of Schur's work here.

Kansas: Life for PWDs under Permanent GOP Rule

There's been a lot of talk about the way ongoing disasters in Kansas presage comparable disasters for the United States under un-checked GOP rule. That's certainly my fear when it comes to disability.

Many conservatives talk eloquently about serving people with disabilities (on a language basis PWDs become objectified, it's a charity-based model, but that's a separate post), but it turns out that once you arbitrarily gut your budget, such services become impossible to provide. It's why I think non-partisan disability rights advocacy doesn't work in this specific era of GOP ideology. 

Here's a new NPR piece on the 7-year-wait to get disability services in Kansas, It starts with a disabled adult who had a job, lost it, went on medicaid, and was told he needed to wait 7 years for the services he was due.

Things got tough last year when Nick lost his job and his health insurance. For the first time, he enrolled in Medicaid. He got his basic medical care covered right away, but in Kansas, there's now a long waitlist — a 7-year wait — for people with intellectual disabilities to get the services they need. Decades ago, Fugate might have been institutionalized, but Medicaid now provides services to help people remain independent — including job coaching, help buying groceries, food preparation and transportation.

Nick is eligible for these services, but while he's on the waitlist, he has to pay for them himself, out-of-pocket, at a cost of around $1,000 a month.

Seven years for people to get services they are legally due. But wait, the story gets worse. Kansas responded by privatizing services:

In 2013 Republican Gov. Sam Brownback put KanCare under the management of three private companies that promised to improve services, cut waste and save enough money to end the long waits for the kind of services Nick needs.
Two-and-a-half years later, many families say they've seen few signs of improvement, especially in terms of shortening the waitlist. In fact, it's actually grown by a few hundred names to about 3,500. And, except in emergency situations, the wait to get treatment averages seven years.

Privatizing services is a great way to make a lot of money, but generally a lousy way to provide services. But wait, the story gets worse! 

In August, the department announced it had eliminated a different waiting list — the one for getting physical disability services. That claim has been challenged by advocates, who say many people were dropped from the list without notice.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the waiting lists, although it declined to comment for this story.
The ability of the state of Kansas to act may be limited. Gov. Brownback's tax cuts, which he initiated to boost the economy, have instead blown a hole in the state's budget, leaving little money to apply to something like reducing the length of the KanCare waitlist.

The US DOJ does a lot of important work investigating basic discrimination questions. Of course the new AG is likely to be Jeff Sessions, who is on record opposing inclusive education. His attitude towards disability rights more broadly isn't clear to me, but there is no reason to believe he'll exercise any oversight over cases like this.

So here's my big question: How many people like Nick Fugate and his family are voting GOP, are voting for Brownback and Trump? How many people close to the Fugate family tsk tsk and shake their head and the waitlist and shrug and keep dutifully voting R?

We have to politicize people with disabilities to vote on these issues that affect their lives. 

"Raping the Retard Vote" - Rightwing Voter Integrity Project Attacks Disabled Voting Rights

UPDATE: Go to "Access the Vote NC" to protect your right to vote.

Here's a story from the "Voter Integrity Project" out of North Carolina.

The image shows a screenshot from MSNBC (Maddow) with an article called, "Raping the 'Retard' Vote" and a picture of Kim Kardashian (for no coherent reason). You can read the current article here, the text of which remains unchanged. It's now called, "Reaping vulnerable voters."

In an election season which has shown unprecedented media attention to the legal and ethical necessity of making voting accessible to people with disabilities, this article surges the other way. Although it claims to be protecting exploitation, in fact it's a piece of intense rhetorical dehumanization followed by a call for specific actions designed to intimidate and bully potential disabled voters.

The article asserts that Democratic parents and care-workers "drag" disabled people to the polls, focusing on individuals with varying types of mental, intellectual, and developmental disabilities. The author offers a few examples, consistently describing people with disabilities as objects whose votes are "harvested." As a solution, it recommends filming people with disabilities preparing to vote, and sharing that footage with VIP for mass release.

First, if you have any friends or relatives who are mentally incompetent and unable to function independently, pay attention to their voting rights. You may look up the condition of their ballot at the State Board of Elections site or by clicking here.
Second, as an added precaution, please consider filming them as you ask them to discuss the election and whether or not they want to vote. Hopefully you won’t need this footage, but if someone harvests their vote, it will be nice to have the footage in court.
Third, the longer-term solution is to share that video footage with people like us at VIP and we will use that information to influence legislators into stopping the civil-rights raping of the weakest in our society.

There are moments when something is offensive and one hesitates to give them attention. Then there are acts of offense so great that they must be named, they must be condemned. For me, this piece - even with the less awful headline - falls into that latter category. It reflect an extreme version of the kinds of ableist stigma that we see constantly. This anti-voting-rights group has deliberately called into question the basic competency of people with varying types of disabilities into question. They advocate - presume incompetence, presume suspicion, videotape, report, and shame disabled people.

EDIT: In my initial post, written in both haste and anger, I did not of course discuss the use of the word raping. In fact, PWDs are especially subject to the threat of sexual violence. To imply that being enabled to vote equals "rape" ramps up the already extreme levels of offense here.

There is, of course, a long history of denying people with ID/DD/MD voting rights, a practice that continues. The website Disability Justice noted in 2012:

Many state Constitutions use language reflecting outdated ways of thinking about citizens with developmental disabilities:
• 7 states deny the right to vote to: “idiots or insane persons”
• others deny the vote to those of “unsound mind, non compos mentis, or those who are not of “quiet and peaceable behavior”
• 16 states bar those adjudged mentally incompetent or incapacitated from voting
• 4 state constitutions bar people “under guardianship” from voting[1]

The media has talked a lot about the ways the Trump campaign has mainstreamed racism, sexism, and antisemitism. I fear ableism is, likewise, intensifying across the right-wing electorate. How else to explain the original headline?

People with disabilities of all sorts may require many different types of trainings and accommodations to vote successfully. But we start by presuming competence. We start by presuming that every citizen who wants to vote should be able to do so, and we build systems to make that possible.

The Voter Integrity folks claim they want to "protect," but their original title gives the game away. It's an ableist part of their broader agenda to shrink the electorate and suppress the vote. They have to be stopped.

#CripTheVote - Disabled child and mother escorted from Trump rally

In Colorado, a woman and her disabled daughter were escorted from a Trump rally for their own safety. The story is not written well in terms of explaining what actually happened, but if you watch the video (there's adequate captioning), the story is clear.

Basically, an "undecided" Colorado voter - Jennifer Mau - went with her disabled daughter to a Trump rally, sitting what has become known as the "ADA section" with other people with disabilities. After 20 minutes, she decided, nah, this is not for me, and the two of them got up to go. A disabled person in her section said, "Why are you leaving," and Mau retorted, "Why are you here? He makes fun of people like you."

As she left, a Trump supporter began to follow and yell at her, saying that if she loved her daughter she would vote Trump and that she needed to get educated. At that point, the Secret Service got involved to escort Mau safely from the rally.

What's striking to me is how clearly the Trump-Kovaleski incident of last November has left an indelible impression on many voters, including the kind of undecided suburban voter that Clinton is now courting in swing states. 

#CripTheVote - Tim Kaine reads a letter from Mike Phillips

.@timkaine met campaign volunteer Mike Phillips today in FL. He has spinal muscular atrophy. Kaine choked up reading the letter he wrote him pic.twitter.com/vWKtHn0a9g

— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) September 26, 2016

As folks know, I've been writing a lot about the Clinton campaign's robust engagement with disability rights. Hillary Clinton has run the most progressive, most inclusive, campaign on disability rights in American presidential history. That doesn't mean she - and the movement - doesn't have a lot of room to grow. But for me, part of my activism is celebrating victories to motivate me for the next struggle.

Above is a tweet from CNN reporter Betsy Klein showing three pictures, with the caption ".@timkaine met campaign volunteer Mike Phillips today in FL. He has spinal muscular atrophy. Kaine choked up reading the letter he wrote him."

• The first is a video of what looks like a wheelchair at the base of the stairs leading up to the Clinton/Kaine plane.
• The second is Kaine standing at the podium, Phillips' letter in his hand, reading. 
• The third is the transcript, which I'll replicate below.

The transcript reads:

12:19:32 There's a really wonderful guy from Tampa named Mike PHillips He's quite an interesting young guy, he severely, has a severe disability, but he said look, that ain't limiting me. That's not limiting me. And he's become an expert in working with Apple and other companies to develop assistive technologies that will help people in their home, in their school, in their workplace. And he has developed amazing technologies, and he and his mom came out to meet with me and, on the subject, he gave me something, and I didn't tell him I was going to do this, but I was reading it as I was driving over, I just thought I would read it to you. Because this is about a community of respect, this is who we want to be. This is from Mike Phillips.

12:20:12 [reads letter] Sen. Kaine, it's an honor to meet you. You are part of a very unique campaign. It's one that I always hoped to see [chokes up] You and Secretary Clinton are running a presidential campaign that consistently talks about people with disabilities. You have actual disability policy written. I have been waiting my entire voting life for candidates like you and Secretary Clinton, candidates who know about and care about disability issues. I really believe that the federal government is America's heart. It steps in to right America's wrongs. Slavery, desegregation, women's rights, LGBT rights ... the federal government stepping in and doing what was right. And I hope that you and Sec. Clinton will push disability rights forward. I hope you work to end the false perception that we're broken, that we're less than. I never wanted to not be disabled. I wouldn't be me otherwise. I simply want the tools to, as a fine Methodist lady once put it, live up to my God-given potential. That's all anyone wants, really. Some just need help accessing those tools. I'm glad for you and Sec. Clinton this election cycle because I know you're fighting for us, all Americans including Americans who have disabilities.

12:21:19 Man, that gives me some energy. That's what the campaign is about. We're stronger together.

----------

Many things to love about that letter, but among them, I cherish Phillips' assertion of a progressive philosophy of government designed to create equality of opportunity. 

Alice Wong and Reclaiming "Inspiration"

Yesterday, NBC News profiled Alice Wong and the Disability Visibility Project. Go read it!

I am genuinely inspired by Alice Wong. With neither budget nor celebrity, she's created an vibrant, accessible, community of people with disabilities, family members, and allies. She's told stories and made it possible for others to tell their stories. She works constantly to promote disability issues both within the community - building networks - and for the broader public via her writing and Twitter. Most recently, she's collaborated with Gregg Beratan and Andrew Pulrang to create Crip The Vote, which I believe has had a discernable impact on the 2016 presidential election.

Wong inspires me to work hard, to center the voices of disabled individuals and to make sure that those voices are as diverse as possible - both in terms of their diagnoses and their other markers of identity.

I write this because "inspiration," as you likely know, has a bad reputation in the disability community (my pieces on inspiration porn here, here, and here, with links to the many other wonderful writers within those). So often, both the professional media and social media promote that idea that to be disabled and merely to exist is inspirational, that to serve disabled individuals with or without consent is inspirational. It's demeaning. It's dehumanizing. As a community, we've come to reject that whole notion of inspiration.

But true inspiration - when one is inspired by the actions of others to work harder, to be better - is a beautiful thing. A year ago, I interviewed the legendary Judy Heumann, one of the earliest high profile activists in the history of the modern disability rights movement, and she talked about having been inspired by Ed Roberts, another legend. Then she walked back the term "inspirational" a little, and I thought - it's ok to be inspired by Ed Roberts! Or Judy Heumann! Or Alice Wong! The key is to make sure it's not pornographic, it's not about looking at their lives and using it as a way to feel good/bad, but as a model to guide your own work.

We need inspiration. Alice Wong - I am inspired by you, so I'm gonna finish this blog post and get back to work.

#CripTheVote and Dante: Priorities USA Cuts a New Ad Featuring Disabled Child of Color Speaking for Himself

This is the new Priorities USA ad - Dante. It features a young disabled African-American boy speaking directly to the camera about Donald Trump.

A few weeks ago, Priorities USA released the ad Grace, which features who nice white parents of a disabled child criticizing Donald Trump for making fun of people with disabilities. I wrote about the ad, here, for The Atlantic, praising the intent but concerned about disability stereotypes. I also spoke to Alice Wong, Dominick Evans, and Vilissa Thompson, three disability rights leaders on whom I rely on most heavily, to get their opinions. Here's a few quotes:

Dominick: “It feels really exploitative to use this issue and speak about a disabled child and about disability and never include us in the discussion, at all.”

Alice said the parents framed their daughter as, "this vulnerable person who needs protection when disabled people have agency."

Vilissa: “Disabled children's images and stories are always used to evoke the sympathy feels among members in society.” The images used are almost always of white children. She said she understands why Priorities USA turned to a nice white family for this ad—they want to sway the hearts and minds of moderate, white voters who might be offended by Trump—but it “says a lot about what face is used to get to the hearts of America.”

Dante addresses all of these concerns, pretty much to the letter. The disabled child, a person of color, speaks for himself. There are no adults in the ad. I think he comes off as strong and independent, calling out Trump for his bigotry. #CripTheVote indeed.

#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?

Resource: #CripTheVote Coverage

#CripTheVote has become an important hashtag, founded by Alice Wong, Andrew Pulrang, and Gregg Beratan, intended to bring disability into the  conversation around the 2016 presidential campaign.

Like most forms of online activism, its primary function (to my mind) is to thicken networks. We tweet, we use the hashtag, we encounter each other and find the depth and breadth of our community. Twitter is a more accessible space than most, so it's particularly well suited to the diversity of the disability community.

For hashtag activism (not a dismissive term from me) to jump beyond the platform requires help from the media. It's beginning to work, perhaps.

Valerie Payne for HLNtv.com writes:

A new hashtag surfaced Thursday night during the PBS "NewsHour" Democratic debate, which was simulcast on CNN. Amidst the debate between presidential contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, disability advocates are demanding their voices be heard and their issues addressed during this election cycle, so they developed that hashtag: #cripthevote.

Washington Post feature writer Caitlin Gibson writes:

It’s a safe bet that certain hot-button issues will be addressed in the next round of Democratic and Republican presidential debates this week: unemployment, health care, gun control, the economy.
But will the candidates talk about how the unemployment rate among the disabled is more than double that of non-disabled Americans? Or that people with disabilities are far more likely to be victims of violent crime? Will there be any mention of the many disabled people whose struggles are compounded by poverty and inadequate health care?
Probably not, say disability rights advocates — so they aim to change that. As the candidates take the stage, and a vast audience follows along on social media, disabled voters plan to make their voices heard by rallying under the Twitter hashtag #CripTheVote.

Best of all s.e. smith, one of my favorite journalists who writes on disability, got a piece into The Guardian on disability and politics more generally:

Disabled people are also very worried about police violence, says Pulrang. “The police killings that have garnered so much attention in the last few years include people with disabilities, who were killed in part because of poor understanding of how to communicate with people who have various kinds of disabilities.” That could be another point of collaborative organizing, as the black community is similarly concerned with the issue – notably, many victims of police violence are both disabled and black, in an intersection of injustice.

RespectAbility is one group that’s hoping to promote voting in the disability community with outreach on these issues. The group is surveying and educating candidates on disability issues and conveying responses to disabled voters and other interested parties. Their hope, as with other disability activists, is to increase voter participation and push candidates to do better on disability issues – ultimately, that may include promoting bloc voting, with initiatives like#CriptheVote and RevUp! doing voter outreach as well. Wong is cautious about turning the disability community into a monolith, though, preferring to focus on uniting people behind common issues like social services.

It’s not enough to mobilize as a group, Pulrang, Schur, Cruse and Dickson all argue: We need more data on disabled voters to learn more about barriers to voting access, how people are voting, and which sectors of the disability community should be targeted to increase political engagement.

Let me know if you see more mainstream media articles like this (not diminishing blogs. Blogs, like hashtags, thicken networks and sharpen arguments. I'm interested though when disability pieces get through mainstream media editors and possibly reach new audiences).

My recent pieces on the subject:

• A Reporting Project Puts Disabilities on the Political Agenda (The Atlantic, 1/25/16)
• Autism: Can other candidates match Hillary Clinton's plan? (CNN.com, 1/10/16)
• Politicians are Ignoring Americans with Disabilities (Al Jazeera America, 11/10/15)