(film reel clattering) - Welcome everyone to today's weekly national news conference.

I'm Sunita Sohrabji.

I am Ethnic Media Services' health editor and today's moderator.

Our topic today is "Threats to the U.S.

Electoral Process".

Who can vote?

Whose vote counts?

The midterm elections are fast approaching and this briefing will explore threats to the way elections are run in the U.S., not just who gets to vote, but how and whether their votes actually get counted.

Speakers will discuss gerrymandered maps that diminish the power of [audio/video stalled] voters of color, laws that restrict access to the polls, efforts by partisan poll workers to interfere in the election process among other dangerous trends.

We have assembled a stellar panel of boots-on-the-ground experts for this briefing.

They include Michelle Bishop, Voter Access and Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network; Kira Romero-Craft, managing attorney-- I'm sorry!

You are now the legal director for Demos.

Is that right, Kira?

- [Kira] Yes, that's correct.

- Okay!

Now we begin first with Kira Romero-Craft, who is the director of legal strategy at Demos.

Kira, welcome to our call today.

- Thank you so much and what a pleasure to be here with you all.

I hope everyone can hear me.

I will be brief.

I wanted to give folks an update on Florida situation.

At Demos, we work on state and national issues, but I think in sort of following the conversation here as what is happening at the statewide level, Florida is also challenging the redistricting maps.

I am not here today to talk about that case in particular, although I will say that it very much follows the trend that we've seen across the country.

Although Florida's growth in terms of communities of color has been unprecedented, in particular Black and Latino communities, there was a... in fact, the Black districts were cut in half by Governor DeSantis' redistricting efforts.

And, unfortunately those cases are still being fought in state and federal court and it looks like we will most likely have those districts remain in time for these elections.

And, it could take months and years to get those addressed.

I'm here to talk about the case that we filed at Demos, and with other partners, in the spring of last year as related to Florida's SB 90 case.

That is a anti-voter law that was passed in light of the unprecedented turnout in 2020 of voters of color in Florida.

Essentially, what it did is it scaled back all of the advancements that Florida had made in light of the pandemic that were used primarily for voters of color for the first time.

Primarily, drop boxes in communities of color where there tend to be long lines.

They pass anti-solicitation law that made it essentially a crime for folks to offer water, food.

- [Sunita] Kira?

I'm so sorry.

One of our interpreters is asking that you speak a bit slowly, and I'm terribly sorry to interrupt you!

- No, no!

It's okay!

That's always my issue.

- [Sunita] Okay.

- I appreciate that.

And so, in Florida we saw laws that were passed to stop solicitation, meaning assisting voters who were in long lines as well as going after third party voter registration organizations.

For folks who may not be aware, third party voter registration organizations are the organizations- and in Florida, as in many other states- those organizations, their focus and their goal is to register voters; in particular, disenfranchised voters, voters of color, Black communities, Latino, Asian communities, disabled folks.

And, what the Florida legislature did was that they essentially made the requirement that third party voter registration organizers, when registering voters, had to provide a disclaimer essentially advising the voter that their voter registration potentially would not be processed in time, which caused a chilling effect for the third party voter registration organizations to then actually be able to complete the process of collecting those registrations.

So, we filed a lawsuit in March of last year.

At around the same time this year, in a 288-page decision from the federal court in the Northern District of Florida, we won a pretty incredible victory finding for us on most of our claims, not all of our claims.

And, which was really remarkable given that in this state, the legislature and the governor have been activists, meaning that they are going after anyone who challenges the state and in particular the legislature.

So, really deep appreciation to those third party voter registration organizations.

Our lawsuit was also part of other lawsuits by the League of Women Voters- Florida Rising Together was our client- Equal Ground, Poder Latinx, Hispanic Federation, UnidosUS, all organizations that primarily work with communities of color, Latino communities, and other historically disenfranchised communities.

[audio glitch] Despite that incredible win, [audio restored] of course, the case was appealed and for folks who have familiarity with the Eleventh Circuit, it is not necessarily a place that is welcoming or supportive of these types of cases, in particular democracy and voting rights cases.

And so, wanted to talk about that because I think for folks who may hear of the new stories about cases in Florida, Alabama, Texas- a lot of the cases that emanate from the South- they may think, 'well, it's not touching upon me.

'I have nothing to worry about for other parts of the country.'

But, the reality is that what happens in the South impacts the entire country.

The cases that we bring on behalf of disenfranchised communities, I think, really can show the power of partisan groups, how they use the democratic system that we currently know today to gain advantages.

And, one of the things, the takeaways that I'd like to share with everyone is that today it may be the Republican Party, but tomorrow it may be the Democratic Party.

And so, I think in talking about these issues, I think it's very important to Mr. Milligan's point to think about that this is the infrastructure of American democracy.

This isn't necessarily in the way sometimes that it's portrayed, party against party.

Really, when we allow the democratic system that we enjoy to be weaponized, it impacts us all.

And so, one of the things that I would definitely want to impart on anyone who is listening is that these systems in the wrong hands can be used in very terrible ways and further cause division and destruction of what we hope to continue to build in terms of the democratic system of the United States.

And then, the last point I would like to make is related to Amendment Four, which many folks may recall; a historic constitutional amendment to Florida's constitution allowing for folks who have felony convictions to then gain their voting rights back, except for a couple of exceptions.

A few exceptions that passed in 2018 and the Florida legislature subsequently filed SB 7066, which then was the implementation laws.

What we're seeing currently is under this legislature is seeing that folks are being impacted in terms of folks who thought that they were eligible to vote, but may have unknowingly registered to vote and cast a ballot.

We saw the announcement a few months ago of the governor announcing that there were 20 prosecutions as related to folks who had committed voter fraud.

And now, that a lot of those cases have been shown that these voters actually did try to confirm their eligibility, and received voter registration cards and indeed went ahead and voted.

Unfortunately, this is now being used again as a way to chill voters and voters who may have been impacted by prior criminal convictions.

This is something that I think folks should be very much aware of and understand that this is, again, a system that has been used traditionally, historically in this country to disenfranchise voters, in particular Black voters.

And, it is being used again as a weapon to keep voters from exercising the franchise.

And so, I think it's important to uplift that.

I've seen a lot of stories talking about this in partisan ways, but again, this is a threat to democracy and there is no reason that any voter, regardless of prior criminal history, should not be eligible to exercise a franchise.

And so, with that, I will end here.

Thank you.

- Thank you so much, Kira.

There's a question that immediately came up, which is, (reads chat) "what will the gerrymandered maps in Florida mean for Black and Latino voters?"

- Unfortunately, we are stuck with the decisions of the court at this time, with the District Court of Appeal.

Basically the maps as they currently are, that those are the maps that we're going to have to live with until the cases make its way through the courts.

And, essentially, what that means is that we are going to have to fight even harder to ensure that we are able to run candidates and are able to support those candidates if we want to see candidates of choice win elections.

This isn't-- unfortunately, there isn't any positive news to share other than we are hopeful that Floridians will exercise a franchise.

And, we have to find hope in the community and use these as ways of exercising the democratic muscle and also using voter education.

I think with the economy, what it is with the environment- what it is in Florida, Hurricane Ian- just tragedy that people, I think were not anticipating across the state.

It's gonna be much harder to get folks to understand how even these decisions now that are gonna be made in terms of federal and state funding as related to housing, they're all impacted by the ability to vote.

So, really linking issues to democratic principles of voting, I think is gonna be increasingly important so that folks can understand how they're all tied together and how it makes all of the difference for folks to exercise a franchise.

- We'll take one question from Orhan.

Orhan, please ask your question quickly and briefly.

- Yeah.

I mean, as far as I know, most of the company they allow to employee to go to the vote.

So, we-?

Yeah.

So, my question is since that, what is the most challenge for the next election are you expecting?

- So, that's a great point.

And, I think in Florida what we see similar to other states is a huge service industry.

So, we have-- the number one employer in the state of Florida are Disney, Universal Studios and all of the other businesses that support that industry.

So, what in-- and those jobs in particular because they're shift jobs.

Unfortunately, they do not allow most of the times for folks to have time to go out to vote.

Although Florida does have an early voting period, the changes that have been made in terms of vote-by-mail, a lot of folks don't know that they have to register.

In terms of having their vote-by-mail request, they have to re-register their request to have a vote-by-mail sent to them.

They also have to provide identification numbers, as well.

So one of the things, the challenges, now is to make sure that Floridians understand that they have to do that!

They have to register their identification number in order to get a vote-by-mail ballot, and that they know how to return that vote-by-mail ballot in a way that's safe.

You can no longer give your vote-by-mail ballot to someone who is not a family member, as defined by Florida law.

And so, all of those changes in voting law require education, voter education.

And, that is something that I know the organizations that we work with at Demos are-- they're putting all of their efforts into voter education this time to ensure that all voters understand how-- what the different options that they have to cast the ballot.

- Kira, thank you so much for your remarks today.

We move on to Michelle Bishop, who is the Voter Access and Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network.

Michelle, welcome.

- Thank you so much.

It's my honor to be here this afternoon.

I promise you I feel the weight of this moment.

I'll also, before I get started, say quickly that I am by birth a fast-talking New Yorker.

So, I am trying so hard for our interpreters to speak slower!

You all let me know if I'm not doing you proud and I'll slow down!

(she laughs) So, before I talk about some issues we're concerned about going into the elections, I thought it might be helpful to back up just a little bit for a moment and talk about voters with disabilities more broadly.

I'm aware that this is a community that not everyone is maybe as knowledgeable about as someone like me who thinks about voters with disabilities every single day!

So, people with disabilities according to the census, are actually about 20% of the entire U.S. population, about one-in-five Americans.

But if we actually look at data that we have from the CDC and Pew Research Center, they put that number more like 25%.

So, about one-in-four Americans are people with disabilities, a much larger community than I think we generally understand.

And, we do have data that shows that this is an incredibly diverse intersectional community.

People with disabilities are overrepresented among racial minority communities, the LGBTQIA+ community, as well.

People who are low-income people with disabilities are underemployed and unemployed at an astonishing rate.

There are about 40 million eligible voters with disabilities in the United States.

That's one-sixth of the total electorate of the United States.

40 million we know is a huge group that is enough to determine the outcome of any election we've ever had in the United States.

But the turnout of voters with disabilities actually lags behind our non-disabled peers at a rate of about 6% and that's fairly consistent across election cycles.

I realize 6% doesn't sound like a huge number for me to be so concerned about that I'm here to talk to you today.

I didn't say 50%.

I didn't say 75%; 6%.

But when we're talking about tens of millions of voters, a 6% gap in turnout could represent anywhere from about 3 million to 5 million lost votes in any given election.

And, that?

That is a truly significant number, especially when we think about the intersection of people with disabilities with other traditionally marginalized voters, as well.

And, there is data to show from Pew Research Center that people with disabilities actually report that elections really matter and that they're paying attention to the outcome of elections at a higher rate than their non-disabled peers.

So, that gap in turnout isn't due to a lack of interest in elections.

It's not an apathy.

It's more that there are stable barriers over time that have truly prevented our participation.

The majority of polling places in the United States for traditional in-person voting are inaccessible.

They're out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Traditional vote-by-mail-- we talked about vote-by-mail and absentee voting a little earlier or at least in the chat I was reading-- is inaccessible to people with disabilities.

Mailing someone a piece of paper and expecting them to be able to mark it with a pen is something that someone who's blind, someone who doesn't have use of their hands, is never gonna be able to do.

So, there are some stable barriers over time that I can talk about in the Q & A if that's helpful.

But today, I wanted to zero in on a few issues that we're particularly concerned about over the last few election cycles and that we think are gonna continue to be issues going forward.

And, I'm conscious of time; can try to be really brief, as well.

The first issue I wanted to touch on was going back to the 2016 presidential election.

We've seen increased calls for poll watchers in particularly partisan poll watchers and some calls for them to be more aggressive and disruptive in polling places.

This always concerns us that in particular, people with disabilities and people with limited proficiency in English are going to be targets of poll watchers and questioned on their eligibility to vote, despite the fact that they are citizens, that they are eligible to vote and they're on the voter rolls when they show up to vote on Election Day.

We've seen this happen often to people with disabilities and people with limited proficiency in English, especially if they've brought someone with them to assist them in accessing the ballot that there start to be questions from those poll watchers when nothing inappropriate is going on.

Which, actually leads me into our one of our major, major concerns going into the midterm elections.

Coming out of the 2020 presidential election and the large number of baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, there have been repeated attempts to limit that right to voter assistance for voters.

This is a federally protected right.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 says that if you are a person with a disability or a person with limited proficiency in English, that you have the right to bring anyone you want with you to assist you to vote, or to help you cast your vote-by-mail ballot.

The only limitations on that is that it can't be your employer and it can't be your union representative.

This doesn't have to be someone who's also voting.

They don't have to be a citizen.

They don't have to be over the age of 18.

It can be whoever you trust to help you mark your ballot the way you intend, or help you get your ballot back by the deadline if you're voting by mail.

This is particularly critical for people with disabilities who live in long-term care facilities.

People who live in nursing homes and institutions for whom voting by mail is somehow-- is often the only way they are able to access the ballot, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And, they often rely on the assistant of their choice to help them to return that ballot.

We've seen attempts to limit this through state legislation.

We just had sort two successful suits challenging those types of laws in Wisconsin and North Carolina recently because it is a violation of the Voting Rights Act to attempt to limit who can assist a voter or how many voters one person can assist, which would also deny some voters the assistant of their choice.

Especially when you think about somebody who maybe lives in a group home, or residential facility where they might be relying on the staff to assist them to cast their ballots.

And so, limiting that staff person to assisting three voters to potentially disenfranchise another voter.

So, we've seen an increase in states looking to limit that federal right to assistance that concerns us.

We're also concerned that, that could lead to challenges at the polls for in-person voting, poll workers questioning this assistant who's coming with the voter inappropriately.

The last thing that I'll touch on very quickly.

This wasn't as big as an issue as we expected in 2020 because of the pandemic, but we have seen particularly since 2018, an increase in unnecessary closure of polling places that's being blamed on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Randolph County, Georgia was notable for this when they closed 80% of their polling places and they claimed it was because they were inaccessible.

The important thing to note there is that the disability rights community is not asking for polling closure of inaccessible polling places.

Taking away a polling place entirely in no way makes voting more accessible for people with disabilities or any voters!

The Department of Justice does not ask for these polling place closures.

They work with counties to help modify or relocate those polling places responsibly and will allow them to use stopgap measures to avoid polling place closures.

And, that in many of these counties, there's no clear evidence that, that polling place closure was needed, that they'd even done their due diligence of serving those polling places according to the ADA or working with the disability rights community-at-large.

And, we're concerned that now that people are somewhat migrating back to in-person voting, post-COVID, that this could be an issue that we continue to see on the rise, as well.

So, just focusing in on those three issues, but happy to talk about any barriers that voters with disabilities face, if there are any questions.

Thank you.

- Michelle, thank you so much.

Have you surveyed disability voters on the single worst barrier they face when they're trying to vote?

- That is such a great question.

Our community is so big and so broad that there isn't usually one barrier that is a problem for all voters.

For someone who uses a wheelchair, the biggest barrier might be polling places that are in church basements where there's stairs and no elevator to get down; for someone who's blind is that they can't hand mark a paper ballot and need the accessible equipment or an accessible remote voting option.

I will say one of the consistent issues that we see across the board, no matter what the barriers are for you, are poll workers or elections officials who don't take accessibility seriously, who are not honoring the federal rights of voters with disabilities, and who don't include people with disabilities in the process when they are planning an election.

And, don't talk to the disability community about what it would take to make a polling place accessible, to purchase a voting system that's gonna work for voters, to make their vote-by-mail more accessible.

Elections officials who are not engaging with our community and not taking these laws seriously, just create more barriers overall for voters.

- Absolutely.

And, just to quick follow up.

Are disabled voters who, somebody walks with a cane or is in a wheelchair, are they allowed to sort of circumvent a long line?

I know that's a bonehead question, but it came up.

So-?

- It's actually a great question!

So, under federal law- a law we don't talk about very often called the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act.

We don't talk about it much because it predates the Americans with Disabilities Act; actually says that you have the right to request to move up in line.

Says you have the right to request it.

It doesn't say that they have to move you up.

So, very often they will send you to the front of the line because it's easier for you and it's often easier for the poll workers but if they don't, they have to accommodate you in some other way.

Whether or not that's bringing you a chair or something, they have to be able to accommodate your needs.

We're concerned about that in places like Georgia where perhaps what you need is water-- - [Sunita] Mm hm!

- Or food to prevent a diabetic emergency and they won't be allowed necessarily to provide things like that for voters who are in line.

So, it's actually a fantastic and a really timely question.

- Michelle, thank you so much for your comments today.

Very much appreciated.

I would like to ask Michelle the most important piece of information you would like our reporters take away from this briefing.

- Sure.

I would say that the most important takeaway is that people with disabilities are represented in every community in the United States, and attempts to suppressing our vote and create barriers to access of the vote for people with disabilities absolutely have a disproportionate impact on other marginalized voters, as well.

Polling place closures in particular, I think are an effort to close polling places in Black and brown communities and blame it on people with disabilities.

And, I think this new movement towards criminalizing voter assistance will have a disproportionate impact on people who work in long-term care facilities and nursing homes who-- we're talking about particularly people of color and women of color that work in these facilities who could be prosecuted for a bogus crime of assisting their resident to vote.

[mellow music] - Speakers, we could have spent an entire hour with any of you!

Thank you so much for joining us today.

And to our reporters, thank you for joining us.

See you next Friday!

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