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Why does nobody talk about the 2017 CDC disability data on voting access?
I dug into the CDC's 2017 Disability and Health Data System last week and found that only 56% of disabled adults in Ohio reported voting in the 2016 election, compared to 68% of non-disabled folks. Everyone keeps pushing for more accessible polling places, but the stat that surprised me was that transportation to the polls, not the booths themselves, was the top barrier cited. Should we be shifting more advocacy money toward ride programs instead of curb ramps? Has anyone else seen numbers that challenge where we focus?
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kaib181mo ago
Changed my mind completely on this. I used to think the curb ramps and booth height were the whole battle, but once you see transportation as the number one hurdle, it just clicks. Getting to the poll is half the fight, and for a lot of people, a ride is way harder to find than a ramp. I bet if we threw half the accessibility budget at ride programs, we'd see a bigger jump in turnout. Makes me wonder how many other states hide similar numbers in their own data.
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