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By law, every early voting site and polling place should be fully accessible, and every disabled voter should be able to vote privately and independently. In particular, all early voting sites are required to have at least one fully functional Voter Assist Terminal (VAT), the accessible voting system used to cast a ballot instead of hand-marking a paper ballot, and a wheelchair-height voting booth available for hand-marking paper ballots.
If you need help, you can request assistance from poll workers. You can request assistance if you need help navigating to the voting booth, reading and marking your ballot, or operating the voting equipment. Or, you can bring someone with you to assist you in casting your ballot, as long as that individual is not your employer, an agent of your employer, or an officer or agent of your labor union.
If your polling location or early voting site isn’t accessible, you have options. You can call your city or township clerk and ask to be reassigned to an accessible site or you can request curbside voting, and poll workers will bring your ballot out to you. You can also request an absentee ballot, although we no longer recommend doing so, since it’s so close to Election Day. Please report all access barriers to (866) OUR-VOTE | (866) 687-8683, the nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline. When we learn about access barriers, we can work with clerks and other election officials to address them.
Finally, if you can’t mark a paper ballot, you may request an accessible absentee ballot online by visiting mi.gov/vote and clicking “accessible voting.” Once you receive your accessible electronic ballot, you can mark it using your own accessible technology. After completing your ballot, you must print it, place it in an envelope, sign the back of the envelope, and return it to your city or township clerk. At this point, we recommend returning your ballot in person to your city or township clerk’s office or satellite office, or to a drop box in your city or township. You can also have an immediate family member or a person from your household drop it off for you. And if you are unable to drop your ballot off or have an eligible person drop it off for you, you can ask your city or township clerk to pick up your completed ballot, so long as your ballot is in the city or township where you are registered to vote and you contact your clerk by 5 p.m. on Friday, November 1. We no longer recommend returning your ballot by mail.
If you would like to learn more or work with DDP, please visit www.detroitdisabilitypower.org or contact us at info [at] detroitdisabilitypower.org.
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