In The Politics of Autism, I write: "Support from the general public will be an important political asset for autistic people. Another will be their sheer numbers, since a larger population of identified autistic adults will mean more autistic voters and activists."
Trump has a horrible record on disability, both on policy and his personal behavior.
KENYA HUNTER and AYANNA ALEXANDER at AP:A new report from Rutgers University estimates that about 40.2 million eligible voters in the quickly approaching U.S. presidential election are disabled. Add those who cohabitate with people who have a disability, and you’re looking at close to one-third of the voting population for an election in which health care is among the key campaign issues.
The disabled voting bloc is growing as the U.S. population ages, but voters and advocates say the hurdles that make people feel excluded from the electoral process aren’t being addressed. That ranges from inaccessible campaign materials to former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris seldomly mentioning how issues like COVID-19 impact the disability community, as well as Trump making a statement at a rally last month that advocacy groups considered discriminatory.
“They should be treating us like we’re their path to victory because we are, frankly,” said Dom Kelly, the founder and CEO of New Disabled South, an advocacy group that focuses on disability rights in the South. “You win or lose because of disabled people, and if you don’t take our community seriously, that will reflect on the outcome of your campaign.”
Lisa Schur and her husband Doug Kruse lead the Program for Disabilities Research at Rutgers and co-wrote the new report, which also shows there are 7.1 million disabled voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
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The Harris campaign recently hired Anastasia Somoza as its disability engagement director. Somoza, who has cerebral palsy and uses a motorized wheelchair, said the Harris campaign will host an event with disabled entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh on Monday. Somoza also said she tries to make sure there’s a virtual option for all campaign events.
In 2023, the vice president met with leaders in the disability space about transportation issues, and she has proposed paying for home care with Medicare and eliminating subminimum wage for disabled workers.
But the two presidential campaigns could do more, said Holly Latham at #MEAction, which advocates for people with chronic fatigue syndrome. She said ads, fliers and events need to be accessible to all disabled people.
The number of eligible voters with disabilities is growing with the aging of the population and advances in medical technology. This brief report summarizes projections of how many people with disabilities will be eligible to vote in the November 2024 elections, based on analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s 2018-2022 American Community Survey combined with Census Bureau population projections for 2024. The methodology is described at the end of the report.
The key findings, as shown in Table 1 and pictured in Figure 1, are:
- A projected 40.2 million people with disabilities will be eligible to vote in the November 2024 elections, representing close to one-sixth of the total electorate.
- The number of eligible voters with disabilities has increased 5.1% since 2020, compared to an increase of 2.5% among eligible voters without disabilities.
- There will be 72.7 million eligible voters who either have a disability or have a household member with a disability, almost one-third of the total electorate.
