Disabled Elections and Research: Disability Status and Voter Turnout in America

Abstract

People with disabilities face well-documented obstacles to voting in elections, including inaccessible polling places and ballots. Yet political science research on voter turnout rarely includes disability status in models. I document this through a systemic review of highly ranked political science journals. Then, using data from the Current Population Survey Voter Supplement, I show that people with disabilities have lower turnout rates than people without disabilities. I find that people with cognitive and mobility-related disabilities have the lowest turnout rate among this group of voters. Finally, I use the Cost of Voting Index to demonstrate that more restrictive voting laws and rules decrease turnout among people with disabilities. Given these results, I call on researchers to begin including variables for disability status in surveys and voter turnout models.

Keywords: people with disabilities, voter turnout, elections