John Minchillo/AP Photo
A polling station at Yonkers Middle/High School, on primary day in New York, June 23, 2020
As New York worked to expand its voting options for its June primary, the absentee ballot option did not work for many voters with disabilities. Flaws in the absentee ballot procedure made it difficult to vote independently and privately, to the point that some had to vote in person yesterday in order to cast their votes.
Eva Burgess described the process as disappointing. Like many New York voters, Burgess, who is blind, normally goes to the polls to vote, but because of the coronavirus, she opted for the absentee ballot option. However, this option was not immediately accessible to people with disabilities and would not allow voters to cast their ballots independently and in private.
A coalition of disability groups responded with litigation at the end of May to demand an accessible option, which was settled with an agreement with the New York State Board of Elections. Election officials agreed to provide absentee ballots by email to voters with disabilities on request. The ballots should have been designed to be easily read by assistance programs used by people who are blind, and so that they could be filled out electronically, which would also accommodate people with disabilities affecting their motor skills. But different counties used different vendors, and voters faced a range of problems with the compromise voting option.
Burgess was able to successfully use her computer to read and mark her electronic ballot. However, the ballot makers designed the ballot on legal-size paper, not the standard 8.5 × 11 printer paper size. The resizing and printing instructions were difficult to follow and did not accurately resize her ballot.
Burgess caught the error because she scanned her printout and tried to read back her ballot using her accessibility software. When there were words cut off and other blank spaces, she knew something was wrong.
“If you get all the way through that and the only thing that messes you up is printing the damn thing out to be able to send it off, that’s horrible. I cannot explain to you how horrible that is,” Burgess told the Prospect.
The Board of Elections office offered to send an IT technician to help Burgess print her ballot, but this would have compromised the privacy of her vote. Burgess ended up going to the polls on Election Day.
Privacy was also a concern for Jose Hernandez, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Hernandez has a motor disability and relied on the agreed-upon absentee process to vote, but he was not able to follow all of the steps alone. While Hernandez was able to use his computer to mark his ballot, he was unable to get it into the return envelope and had to be assisted by his home health aide. Like Burgess, Hernandez also encountered issues with page printing size.
“It definitely was not private, but it was independent because I didn’t have to worry about anyone making those choices for me,” Hernandez says. Although Hernandez agreed to this method in the final weeks before Election Day, he hopes for a better option in November—maybe even a choice that is fully digital.
One of his co-plaintiffs, Keith Gurgui, of Ulster County, also experienced similar problems after everything that could be done on the computer was completed. Gurgui relied on his father to get his ballot securely into the envelope, facing a similar physical obstacle to Hernandez.
Meghan Parker’s ballot was not designed to be completely read by her assistance technology. Parker, who is blind, had to rely on someone else to assist her in accurately casting her ballot. She was able to mark her choice in the presidential primary, but then unable to independently know which delegates to vote for to correspond with her choice.
The partially accessible voting option “had a lot of potential to increase access,” Parker said. “It probably gave many people a way to vote independently, and I think given the rushed nature of the situation, it was probably the best that the Board of Elections could choose from.”
The original absentee voting option that Gov. Andrew Cuomo made available to all New York voters because of COVID-19 would not have worked for hundreds of thousands of people. The revised option that emerged from the compromise wasn’t perfect, but Gurgui says he was satisfied with this experience because he does not feel confident going to the polls and because Gurgui lives at home and was comfortable getting assistance from his family.
“Hopefully, in the future [the absentee voting process] will be more independent and private,” he says. “But I don’t feel confident going into the polls until I know COVID is dead and everyone’s vaccinated.”
Having to go to a store or searching for an open public library to print out the ballot completely defeats the purpose of voting at home.
The absentee voting process for people with disabilities in this election would also have been impossible to complete without a personal computer and home printer, which many people may not own or have fully set up to use independently. Having to go to a store or searching for an open public library to print out the ballot, of course, completely defeats the purpose of voting at home.
The voting method put in place for yesterday’s primary was a temporary expedient. Going forward, either the legislature or Gov. Cuomo can authorize a new voting procedure for people with disabilities—or the state can prepare to face further litigation.
Hernandez hopes it’s the former, especially because he believes better solutions can be found. “Why does a person with a disability have to go through litigation? We have to fight, fight, fight for the same access as everyone else,” he says. “It’s not like the technology isn’t out there.”
For some people, a lack of improvement in the absentee voting system for people with disabilities may mean missing the opportunity to vote in what many believe will be the most important election of their lives. The November election, says Burgess, “is too important to screw up, and given the fact that this did not work this time around, I’m not going to have a bunch of faith that it’s going to work a second time. So this will definitely not be an option for me in November,” Burgess says. “I’ll just be putting myself in harm’s way to make sure my vote is actually counted and goes through without any hitches.”
