Disability Voting News: April 22, 2026

Welcome to The Accessible Voting Booth for April 22! We have a lot to cover this week, so let’s get started:

New Detroit Disability Power Report Finds that Only 10% of Polling Places in Metro Detroit are Accessible (via Detroit Disability Power). 

Earlier this month, Detroit Disability Power released their findings from their 2025 polling place accessibility audits. In 2025, DDP audited 32 early voting sites and 415 Election Day voting sites, documenting barriers at the parking and pathway, entrances, Voter Assist Terminals (accessible voting equipment), and wheelchair-height voting booths for hand-marking paper ballots. 

Before I dive into the results: through my role at The Carter Center, I supported DDP’s audits and am a co-author of this report. However, what follows (and this entire newsletter) is my own opinion, and is not a reflection of either DDP or The Carter Center. 

The report goes into detail about the barriers observers encountered at polling places and recommendations for addressing these barriers prior to future elections. I urge you to read (or skim) the entire report, but I wanted to share a few details that stood out to me.

The Voter Assist Terminals (accessible voting machines) had the most access barriers.

Only 36% of polling places had a fully accessible VAT. Common barriers they found included VATs that had obstructions in the pathway to and around the machine, VATs that didn’t have headphones set up and plugged in, and a lack of privacy. One polling place did not have a VAT, which is a violation of the Help America Vote Act, which requires at least one accessible voting machine in each polling place.

One important note about this is that VAT accessibility is entirely an operational barrier. Structural barriers, such as cracked pavement, inaccessible ramps, or polling places that only have stairs, require more time and resources to fix. However, making the VAT more accessible requires few financial resources and mainly involves improving poll worker training. Election officials can quickly improve this by ensuring poll workers know how to properly set up the VAT, including ensuring that controllers and headphones are plugged in, that there are no obstructions up to and around the VAT, and ensuring that the VAT has a privacy screen and is faced away from paths of travel for optimal privacy. 

Buildings that regularly fall under Title II of the ADA still have significant access barriers, and are not substantially more accessible than buildings that are exempt. 

One of my favorite metrics to analyze is the type of building a polling place is located in and what accessibility policy applies to it outside of election season. Public schools and places of worship make up 73% of polling places, but many other types of buildings, such as libraries, fire stations, apartment buildings, and community centers, are also used. All buildings fall under one of four categories: 

• ADA Title II: Buildings that are federally mandated to be accessible outside of their function as a polling place, including schools, firehouses, public libraries, and other government buildings.
• ADA Title III: Places of public accommodation; for polling places, these are mainly nonprofit civic centers or private (non-religious) schools. New construction must be accessible, and these places must remove barriers where “readily achievable.” 
• Fair Housing Act: Community centers within apartment buildings or private communities.
• Exempt: Places of worship are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Fair Housing Act does not apply to them.

While places of worship are regularly exempt from accessibility laws, election officials still must ensure they are accessible on Election Day. Out of all buildings, we might assume that buildings that fall under Title II of the ADA should have fewer barriers because they fall under the strictest accessibility laws and must be accessible year-round, not just for Election Day. 

To find out whether this is true, we isolated the metrics that mainly pertain to structural barriers and removed the two metrics that are strictly operational (the VAT and wheelchair-height voting booth) to get a better understanding of the structural accessibility of polling places. What we found is that only 33% of buildings that fall under Title II of the ADA are fully accessible, while 25% of polling places that are regularly exempt from accessibility laws are accessible–that’s not that big of a difference. Meanwhile, 38% of buildings that fall under Title III of the ADA and 67% of the polling places that fall under the Fair Housing Act are fully accessible (however, there are only eight and six polling places respectively for those two groups). Unfortunately, this means that buildings in Metro Detroit that should be fully accessible year-round–schools, libraries, government buildings–are plagued with access barriers. 

Detroit Disability Power has arranged their recommendations in a way that informs election officials and legislators of issues that can be fixed quickly, issues that require funding to fix, and problems that require legislative fixes. 

DDP understands that election officials are working in tense, resource-constrained environments. While all polling places should be fully accessible, the reality is that election officials don’t have significant funding to make major infrastructural fixes, and they have to work with the locations that are available to them in the community for selecting polling places.

Detroit Disability Power has clearly labeled their recommendations for fixing issues by identifying which issues can be most easily fixed with few resources and better training, while labeling issues that will take greater funding or legislative fixes. 

Quick fixes can be quickly implemented through more thorough poll worker training. This includes recommendations such as improving signage at the polling place to more clearly mark the path of travel, knowing where the wheelchair-height voting booth is located and setting it up before the first voter arrives, and ensuring that VATs and accessible voting booths are placed to protect voter privacy.

Some issues require greater funding and resources, and these resources usually have to come from a higher level: ensuring that every polling place is provided with an accessible, wheelchair-height voting booth; allocating funding for identifying and fixing issues at polling places; and investing in structural improvements. Some of these fixes, such as creating a standardized poll worker training on accessibility, must come from the state level. DDP has also recommended that Michigan pass a state law requiring municipalities to report VAT usage to the Michigan Department of State to know how frequently VATs are used. 

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to this report once again, and I’m so amazed at how far we’ve come. The survey that DDP uses has evolved significantly since I started working with them through The Carter Center in 2022. That survey has been shaped by the experiences of dedicated observers who have shown up election after election, year after year, and who have a great familiarity with polling place observation and accessibility. I’m so grateful to these observers for their thorough work. 

Low‑sensory voting to expand across Victoria (via Star Weekly).

The state of Victoria in Australia will be expanding an initiative of low-sensory mobile voting across 88 lower-house districts that was first piloted in 2023 elections. 

During the first trial in Warrandyte, low-sensory hours were provided for disabled and neurodivergent voters to reduce environmental stressors including “noise, bright lighting, crowding and intense interactions with campaigners.” Although some adjustments had to be made following the trial, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and the Victorian Electoral Commission reported that every voter who used low-sensory voting said they would use it again. A refined mobile low-sensory voting system was piloted in early 2025 in Prahran and Werribee by-elections, and that model will now be expanded for future elections. 

IFES and B-SCAN Organize Mock Polling Station By and For Voters with Disabilities in Bangladesh (via International Foundation for Electoral Systems).

Ahead of the first free elections in over 15 years in Bangladesh, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the Bangladesh Society for the Change and Advocacy Nexus (B-SCAN) partnered to organize a mock polling station by and for people with disabilities:

“Set up by B-SCAN and led by persons with disabilities, the polling station included an exercise at the entrance to check identity cards and issue voter slips and a private voting station with lowered tables to accommodate wheelchair users and tactile ballots. The station also included a trained [sign] language interpreter who explained the steps to vote. There was clear directional signage to help voters easily navigate the path through the polling station, including persons with intellectual disabilities. Persons with disabilities served as poll workers, polling agents, and observers during the exercise, demonstrating what inclusive elections could look like, both operationally and with persons with disabilities serving in diverse election roles.”

This mock polling station proved that more accessible elections can be organized in Bangladesh in a way that is “practical and low-cost.” Hopefully, IFES and B-SCAN will use this information to inform Bangladeshi election officials on how to provide accommodations in future elections. 

Maryland law now requires some buses to allow passenger boarding and drop-offs at the entrance of early voting centers within a half mile of the route (via Voting Rights Lab). 

On April 14th, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed into law S 100 (now Chapter No. 107), which requires buses operating on fixed local bus routes that receive county or municipal funding to allow passengers to board and exit a bus near the entrance of an early voting center if it is located within a half mile of the route, on the days that early voting centers are operating. This legislation will be enacted on January 1, 2027, expanding options for voters who are dependent on public transit to make early voting more accessible to them. 

Disability Rights Montana releases “The Most Powerful Right: Protecting the right to vote and advancing civic engagement for Montanans with Disabilities.” (via Disability Rights Montana).

“This report is not neutral. It is not academic. And it is not optional.” DRMT Executive Director David Carlson sets the tone for this report, which shares the findings of the organization’s efforts on understanding and addressing voting barriers for people with disabilities in 2024 and 2025. 

The report groups its recommendations based on living situations for voters with disabilities, as voting access barriers are heavily dependent upon these living situations. They share their efforts at voter registration and education at Montana’s public psychiatric hospital, the Montana State Hospital, where at least two voters had their registration rejected due to the claim that they were of “unsound mind,” and which DRMT challenged in a lawsuit (a final decision has not yet been made). The organization also visited the state’s assisted living facilities, which are grouped into four different categories based on the level of support the facilities provide. Among these facilities, they found great variation in awareness and support of resident voting, transportation to polling places, voter registration, resident interest in voting, and facility openness to outside support for voting.

They also shared findings among adult group homes for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) where eight members of DRMT staff spent over 300 hours monitoring those facilities and reported that many residents were not offered the opportunity to vote or provide input on policy decisions. 

The report also covers state and federal legislative attempts at voter suppression and shares how that legislation impacts voters with disabilities, including both legislation that was defeated and legislation that was passed into law. There’s far more than I can cover here and the report provides great analysis of this legislation, so I urge you to dive in and read the full report on DRMT’s website.

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