Increasing the Disability Vote

Abstract

The disability vote is the overlooked and forgotten vote. To help my organization increase the disability vote, I conducted a series of interviews with people from various disability rights and voting advocacy organizations. The interviews expanded on four common barriers that exist within the disability community and other minority communities: discrimination, voter suppression voter apathy, and lack of Information. They also revealed various approaches and techniques to increase voting among their respective audiences, including social media relationship building, and candidate consideration. Furthermore, the voting habits and outreach techniques of three minority groups were studied – the Latinx population, the LGBTQ+ community, and young people. A brief look at the results of the case studies are discussed in the project. Based on the interviews and case studies three recommendations were made to the organization on how to contribute to increasing the disability vote.