Using an open-ended questionnaire, NCD gathered the experiences of nearly 900 voters with disabilities across the nation during the 2012 election. On October 24, 2013, NCD released Experience of Voters with Disabilities in the 2012 Election Cycle. This report provides a snapshot of architectural, attitudinal, technological, legislative, and voting practice barriers that confronted voters with disabilities and provides an overview of the use of federal funds, activities, and outcomes under HAVA for people with disabilities over the past decade.

KEY FINDINGS

· People with disabilities continue to face barriers in exercising their voting rights because of architectural and physical barriers at registration and polling sites.

o Nearly 40% of respondents to the NCD’s questionnaire encountered physical barriers at their polling places.

· Voters with disabilities do not have equal access to voting systems because states and localities have not invested adequate resources, planning, and training to provide reliable, accessible voting technology.

o 45% of respondents reported barriers inside the polling place involving voting machines.
· Voters with disabilities face discrimination at voter registration and polling sites resulting from poorly trained election personnel and volunteers.
o Nearly 54% of respondents encountered barriers, including attitudinal, inside the polling place.

o 20% of respondents said they were prevented from exercising a private and independent vote.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS
· State and local election officials must be held accountable for compliance with all accessibility provisions of HAVA, the ADA, and other relevant voting rights laws.
· States should upgrade their accessible voting equipment to assure universal access for people with disabilities.

· State and local election officials must invest in adequate training for all election personnel and volunteers.

· The Presidential Commission on Election Administration should adopt the recommendations made in the Experience of Voters with Disabilities report in their own report to the President later this year.

FULL REPORT
Download a free copy of the full report at: http://www.ncd.gov/publications/2013/10242013

Presidential Commission on Election Administration
Commissioners Robert Bauer and Benjamin Ginsberg
GSA,
1776 G Street NW.,
Washington, DC 20006

Dear Commissioners Bauer and Ginsberg:

As the recent government shutdown demonstrated, partisanship is tearing our country apart – and Americans aren’t happy about it. Yet, somehow, despite the shockingly low approval ratings of Congress, low voter turn-out nationwide, and the fact that 40% of Americans identify as independent, our politicians persist in pretending that we are a nation that heartily supports a destructive two-party oligarchy. Thankfully, you have the opportunity to recommend crucial structural reforms that can address this problem and help Americans start believing in their government again.

I am one of the many independents in this country, and one of the 1,100 people who signed a letter encouraging you to recognize that the most important aspect of our election process is ensuring it is open to all. We have testified before your committee that we are not able to fully participate in the democratic process due to partisan primaries, registration requirements, rule-making bodies, ballot requirements, redistricting, and other laws that deny equal voting rights to independent voters. In addition, voters do not have initiative and referendum rights in half the states.

I strongly encourage you to address these issues in your final report. The fact that this disenfranchisement of a huge number of voters has continued for so long is an embarrassment to this nation. Millions of independents register with a party just so that they can exercise their right to have a say in primaries, which is a clear sign that the system is broken.

Show us that America puts its citizens before parties. This is supposed to be a democracy – please help us get closer to being able to fully participate in the electoral process.

Best regards,

Brooke Pierce
New York, NY

Robert Bauer and Benjamin Ginsberg

GSA,

1776 G Street NW.

Washington, DC 20006

Dear Commissioners Bauer and Ginsberg:

The government shutdown is just the most recent evidence partisanship is destroying our country – and it had the whole world watching. The good news is that you have an opportunity to recommend structural reforms that will fix this problem.

I am an independent, one of 1100 who signed on to a letter encouraging you to recognize that the most important aspect of our election process is ensuring it is open to all eligible voters. You know that 40% of Americans consider ourselves independent, and we have testified before your committee that we are not able to fully participate in the democratic process due to partisan primaries, registration requirements, rulemaking bodies, ballot requirements, redistricting and other laws that deny equal voting rights to independent voters. In addition, voters do not have initiative and referendum rights in half the states. I urge you to address these in your final report.

Sincerely,

Stewart Early
2277 Main Street
Bethlehem PA 18017

I am a UK based academic whose research specialises in electoral administration. I have recently published a range of peer-reviewed journal articles in international journals on the topic. The most recent of this research evaluates the UK Electoral Commission’s schemes to improve the quality of electoral management. I am writing to submit this research as evidence because there are a number of lessons that I think the US can learn from the UK which should interest your Commission.

Problems with the administration of elections have plagued recent US elections. One proposed solution has been to publish league tables of election officials’ performance. In her influential book, The Democracy Index, Heather Gerken argued that the publication of such information might be a trigger for change. The idea is that the public ranking of electoral officials (according to factors such as how long voters in their state have to queue, how many ballots get discarded and they make, their registration rates) might encourage them to enact the necessary changes to improve elections. The idea has had some political support from Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton in the past. It has been pushed by the Pew Institute who has launched an Elections Performance Index. But is this likely to have any effect?

The ‘league tabling’ of performance in public services is widely used around the world but the effect that they might have on election administration until now. But lessons can now be learnt from the UK which has seen innovations in this area. Performance standards for senior election officials have been in place since 2008. These were devised by the Electoral Commission and the results published online for all to see through an interactive web tool. A different approach to the Elections Performance Index is used. Rather than rank election officials on outcomes, they were ranked on their processes. The Electoral Commission defined some ‘high quality’ benchmark processes and then measured the extent to which officials had adopted these standards.

My research on the effects that these benchmarks had has just published in new article Electoral Studies (enclosed, also see: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379413001133). The research is based on in-depth interviews with those officials who were subject to the standards. The introduction of the standards was a powerful trigger for change. Many officials suggested that they were useful in facilitating learning. They were introduced to new ways of working, which they had not thought about before, or had not been confronted with a sufficiently powerful trigger for changing procedure. Electoral officials were also concerned about their personal or organisational reputation and therefore adopted the necessary reforms to meet the standard because they were concerned about their reputation amongst peers. Where they thought that there was no reputation loss, they were less likely to change their practices.

There were a number of positive outcomes resulting from the standards. The presence of the standards scheme sometimes increased confidence amongst local politicians who were then less likely to complain about the quality of electoral management. It also led to more regular reviews of working practices within the electoral services departments and more consistent services across the UK.

However, this was not the only innovation. After problems with the administration of elections in the 2010 UK general election (queues, insufficient ballot paper printing – common themes from the US), the Electoral Commission went further. In two referendums in 2011, it began to issue direct instructions to electoral officials and I have also written up the consequences of this in a recent conference paper (http://tobysjames.com/doc/Centralising_electoral_management_JAmes.pdf). This has some positive outcomes because it gave the Commission central oversight over elections and it could address any problems from the centre as it identified them. However, the costs outweighed the benefits. Local knowledge was overlooked and centrally defined procedures were often costly. Local electoral officials became unhappy and felt a sense of loss of ownership over their work. This is perhaps a cause for concern when cash-strapped electoral services often rely on the goodwill of their
employees for high quality elections.

What are the lessons for the US? The Pew Elections Performance Index might be a useful way forward but it depends on the extent to which it is recognised by electoral officials. If they think that their organisational and personal reputation will be affected, then we might expect change. This is not automatic. Professionals might not see it as important and the media might not give it sufficient attention. The EPI is not run by government and this might make a difference. Time will tell.

The UK experience, however, suggests that if the US gave powers to a central government organisation such as the Electoral Assistance Commission to identity benchmark processes and practices for election administration and used these to evaluate electoral officials then there might be some considerable pay-offs for American democracy. Too much centralising election management, however, may lead to fall out and prevent local knowledge being used.

I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have about the research and its implications and I wish the Commission every success.

Yours sincerely,

Toby James
University of East Anglia