There is a Blue Wave Coming — but it’s Not the Democratic Party

There is a wave coming in November. It is growing strength, it threatens to wipe out every single Republican seat up for grabs in the Senate, and it is proudly and boldly blue — but it is not coming from the Democratic Party.

The blue tsunami making its way to the midterm elections is the building energy of the 35 million voters with disabilities mobilizing to form a voting bloc large and strong enough to obliterate the Republican party’s attacks on them and their families. And with numbers larger than both the Latino and Black voting blocks, they have the unique ability to do just that.

As disability justice activist, freelance writer, and inclusion expert Ace Ratcliff explains, “Disabled humans make up a huge chunk of the population. Our ability to access voting/polling booths and stations means that we have every opportunity to be a gigantic game changer when it comes to midterm elections. We are the largest voting bloc you didn’t know existed.”

The disabled voting bloc is not only the largest minority voting bloc, but it arguably has the most at stake.

There 35 million people of voting age with disabilities, and close to 60 million people with disabilities in the United States total. That number is less than 6 million people shy of the number of Democrats that voted in the 2016 election altogether. Additionally, for every individual living with a disability, there are several family members or care providers that live with, support, and depend on one or more people with disabilities directly. The power of the disabled voting block extends beyond the boundaries of their own individual bodies.

As a result, the Republican Party’s attacks on people with disabilities and the gutting of the federal programs that literally keeping them alive is felt not only by those directly targeted, but the threat of losing family members and financial support has become a visceral concern for members of the extended disability family.

The GOP tax and budget cuts have intentionally targeted programs and services for people living with disabilities, their care providers, and their dependents and gutted them. The removal of these programs directly threatens the lives and livelihoods people with disabilities directly, and indirectly threatens the financial security of family members and social networks that will struggle, and most often fail, to provide the medical care, food, shelter, and services the Republican Party is taking away from them.

For example, 4.6 million household include people living with disabilities receiving nutritional assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). According to the new Republican austerity measures 620,000 households will have this food taken away from them in the first year of implementation. In less than 10 years, 2.6 million people will be kicked off SNAP.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will take away the medicine, resources, and support literally keeping people with disabilities alive. Further cuts to housing and vocational assistance programs will eliminate the ability of millions of people with disabilities to live independently entirely.

51% of people living with disabilities cannot use stairs without assistance. 19% need assistance with errands. 6% are hard of hearing and 3% are blind. 3.6 million people over the age of 15 use a wheelchair and over 11.6 million people use crutches, a walker, or other assistive mobility device. The average cost of a custom wheelchair is just less than the average cost of a family car.

The elimination of medical care, food, shelter, assistance, and resources — under no over-estimation — threatens to take the lives of millions of people with disabilities and places millions more in danger of institutionalization, homelessness, and incarceration. These cuts also threaten the stability of households and localities that will be forced to absorb the consequences of the Republicans’ attacks on disabled individuals and households.

And so, the waters are beginning to pull back from the shore as the energy of a blue tsunami gathers strength. But voters with disabilities not only face a life or death struggle just to exist independently in a society that is relentlessly ableist and irresponsible, but this voting bloc faces some of the inexcusable and insurmountable acts of voter suppression the United States has to offer.

Autistic advocate for the rights of disabled people Mallory Thomas describes voting accessibility as a “huge issue.” She goes on to explain, “Polling places need to be safe places for all disabled people. That means ramps, automatic doors, ballots for blind voters, ASL interpreters, sensory friendly environments and more. Political campaigns also need to speak directly to disabled people.”

This isn’t happening, though.

The foundations necessary to truly meet the needs of the disability community as described by Mallory Thomas are not only not in place, but what does exist is crumbling.

According to a recent study conducted by the Government Accountability Office, just under half of polling places during the 2008 presidential election violated at least one accessibility standard. In 2016, 2\3 of polling places were inaccessible in at least one way. The pathway to 2018 is looking no less obstructed.

Pew reports that the overall turnout rate for the 2016 General Election was 61%. White voters, faced with the fewest barriers to suppression as an overall voting bloc, predictably had the highest turnout rates at 65%. Black turnout rates were significantly lower at just under 60%. But the two most suppressed Democratic voting blocs in 2016 were people with disabilities and Latinos at 56% and 50% respectively.

If the rates of voters with disabilities are brought up to the levels of black voters, that would add close to 1.5 million voters back into the disabled voting bloc. If they were brought up to the levels of their white counterparts, that would add over 3 million voters to the incoming wave.

As Pew also reports, voters with disabilities tend to be more engaged politically than the general population. Getting voters with disabilities to the polls isn’t about motivation. The dramatically low rates of voters with disabilities exists because despite the passage od the Americans with Disabilities Act, an associate checklist for ADA accessible voting places, and the legal will to enforce electoral accessibility through the Help America Vote Act, obstacles are still being placed between voters with disabilities and the ballot box.

Mallory Thomas thinks these barriers are intentional and unintentional. She explains:

“Conservatives have spent decades preaching that disabled people basically fall into two groups. Either we’re what abled people consider disabled enough to pity, or we’re not truly disabled because we seem to be able to integrate into the abled world. These people think we deserve to get benefits to keep us alive, but we’re barred from participating in democracy because they think we’re incapable of understanding it. Or we’re lying leeches on society that use our votes to get people into office that give us the most free stuff. Either way, they don’t want us voting. Which, obviously is very intentional, and they’ve been parroting those ideas for so long that a lot of abled people, regardless of party affiliation believe it.

Some of the unintentional disenfranchisement comes from thinking that the only disabilities that need to be accommodated are what abled people think about from their perspective. For example, a polling place might have a ramp out front but their doors might not be wide enough to accommodate a power chair or will be too heavy for a wheelchair user to open on their own without an automatic option. I think this sort of failure has a lot to do with abled people not really knowing or caring enough to invite disabled people to have a seat at the table when it comes to organizing politically. I don’t think they understand that we are politically engaged because the world at large is politically engaged with our minds and bodies whether we want them to be or not.”

There are a number of organizations working tirelessly to remove obstacles to voting and create accessible pathways to the ballot box for voters with disabilities. Among them are Crip The Vote, ADAPT, and the National Council on Independent Living. They are fighting for mail in ballots, accessible polling locations, accessible voting machines, trained polling place workers, and increased outreach. And while success has been seen in places like Colorado where an aggressive disability re-enfranchisement effort brought the turnout rate to a remarkable 69%, there is much work that needs to be done in time to ensure disabled voters can reach the polls this November.

If that work is done, though, millions of voters living with disabilities and tens of millions of households that directly support people living with disabilities will flood the polling booths and drown the Republicans’ chance to implement the reforms that threaten their lives, their livelihoods, and the very nation they live in. If voters with disabilities are allowed to exercise their Constitutional right to vote, the Blue Wave that is approaching just may turn into the Blue Tsunami needed to overturn the Senate.