EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
The fallout from former president Donald Trump’s Big Lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election continues to mount. Republican state lawmakers have introduced an onslaught of bills limiting voting access, which do next to nothing to increase “election integrity” but make it harder for all Americans to vote.
These efforts are a particularly severe threat to communities for whom voting can already be difficult. In fact, preventing people from being able to vote from home is a direct attack on the civil rights of people with disabilities.
The expansion of mail-in voting in 2020 made it significantly easier for Americans with disabilities to engage in the electoral process. Turnout among these voters increased by six percentage points between 2016 and 2020, amounting to 1.7 million more voters. Last year, only 11 percent of voters with disabilities reported having trouble voting, a number that remains too high but is a significant improvement from the 26 percent who faced voting issues in 2012.
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
