Election coverage is certain to dominate the news cycle as we enter the stretch run of the U.S. presidential campaign and all the other congressional and gubernatorial races across the country. The Web is a pollster’s dream, enabling media stories to be sliced and diced in ways that can made appealing to any specific demographic from which a few more votes might be extracted. Disability Scoop, which correctly calls itself “the premier source for developmental disability news,” has three recent stories that clearly indicate individuals with disabilities are one such interest group, despite what Ann Coulter thinks.
In fact, Ms. Coulter (I feel confident that she is the biggest self-Googler on the Web and will no doubt read this post), a recent study of 1,000 expected voters indicates it’s quite possible that issues impacting people with disabilities will be on a voter’s mind as they ponder which box to check on the ballot. Disability Scoop editor Shaun Heasley linked to a PDF version of the Lazlo Strategies presentation in his article, “Disability Concerns May Sway Vote,” back at the beginning of October.
Just over half of the people surveyed said they have a family member or close friend with a disability, 58% of whom fall into the “independent” category so coveted by the campaigns. Forty-one percent of those same independents said they would be more likely to vote for “a Congressional candidate who is committed to making policies and programs to help those with disabilities a national priority.” Women voters are another crucial demographic in this campaign, and 45% of them said a candidate’s stance on issues impacting people with disabilities would affect their choice.
It stands to reason that people with disabilities can play a pivotal role in this election since health care is one of the central issues. Both the Obama and Romney camps have attempted to discredit their opponent’s platform with accusations of which candidate’s plan is going to be more hurtful to underserved populations. The latest analysis comes from Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News (and reprinted here on Disability Scoop), which says the Republican plan would cut $1.7 trillion in Medicaid over the next 10 years.
Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, who is typically credited as the chief architect of this plan, has struggled to explain how giving individual state’s the power to allocate health care dollars will result in better outcomes for people with disabilities. That case will be even harder to make should the Urban Institute’s projection hold true that 31 to 38 million people will be dropped from the Medicaid program between now and the year 2022.
Of course, in order to be able to have one’s voice heard in an election one has to be able to actually vote; yet this fundamental right afforded every American citizen who is not a convicted felon continues to elude people with disabilities. This past Tuesday, Heasley reported that some 30 states have constitutional provisions denying individuals with mental disabilities the right to vote. The impetus for the report was an October 17 article in The Atlantic by reporter Kimberly Leonard. Supporters of the law raise the specter of voter fraud, but advocates like attorney Lewis Bossing say this reasoning is based on an outdated perception of these individuals:
[Bossing] believes the voting laws are rooted in a historical misunderstanding about people with mental disabilities, in which the consensus was that they should be institutionalized in order to be kept safe and cared for. Now, he says, mental disability rights policy is moving toward getting people into the community, living the same life experiences as everyone else and making contributions.
‘The stereotype is that a person with a mental disability can’t express a preference, and is more susceptible than other people to have some undue influence from someone else,’ he said. ‘This is no data to suggest this.’
Will a candidate’s stance on issues affecting people with disabilities impact your vote? Share in the comments section below.
Image by Muffet (Liz West).
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