The Community That May Be Hurt Most by Republican Voter Restrictions: Americans With Disabilities

The Community That May Be Hurt Most by Republican Voter Restrictions: Americans With Disabilities

The Community That May Be Hurt Most by Republican Voter Restrictions: Americans With Disabilities

Bills making it harder for them to vote from home are an affront to their civil rights.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

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.

Support independent journalism that does not fall in line

Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.  

As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth. 

The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more. 

But this journalism is possible only with your support.

This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?

Ad Policy
x