What Has REV UP Been Up To In 2024 to Get Out The Disability Vote?

Dear AAPD Community,

As we near the end of the 2024 election season, we wanted to take a moment to uplift our resources and highlight the incredible work of our REV UP Voting Campaign. REV UP stands for Register, Educate, Vote, Use Your Power! UP coalitions have held regular meetings throughout the year, collaborating on local and statewide work. Each quarter, we’ve hosted national calls bringing together advocates from around the country. You can find recordings of our calls on AAPD’s YouTube.

Need to Make a Voting Plan? We Can Help!
Make sure to check out our State Guides for Disabled Voters. Once you’ve reviewed the information about voting in your state and your rights as a disabled voter, then download our My Plan to Vote template, and make your voting plan!

Powering the Disability Vote: 2024 
In 2024, we’ve supported on the ground work by awarding close to $470,000 to support the work of 100s of partners and grassroots organizers in 28 states and D.C. This funding provided support for local get out the vote efforts, non-partisan candidate forums, operating stipends to our coalitions to support accessible meetings, and launched a “microgrant” program to boost voter outreach this fall and provided additional funds directly to 13 individual disabled leaders in 11 states who were targeting congregate settings, rural areas, and communities that are often excluded from traditional outreach.

REV UP 2024 Highlights

Here’s an overview of some of our voting work this election cycle, from the local to the national level. And we’re not done yet – find upcoming virtual and in-person disability voting events on our REV UP Mobilize dashboard.

Getting Out the Vote

• Congregate Settings Outreach – Traditional outreach methods often leave out voters living in nursing homes, state operated developmental centers, jails, and hospitals, where disabled voters are underrepresented and face numerous barriers to accessing the ballot. REV UP organizers registered voters in congregate settings in 12 states – California, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

• Community Outreach – This year, REV UP coalitions and members have hosted nearly 300 voter outreach events across 33 states and Washington D.C., including demonstrations of accessible voting machines. During the Disability Voting Rights Week (September 9-13, 2024), we reached 5,000 voters and sent swag boxes to 95 events.

• Expanding Language Access – REV UP grantee National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association created “Know Your Rights” voting brochures in 10 languages.

• Rides to the Polls – In Alabama (request a ride at 256-701-4182, sign up to volunteer), Georgia (request a ride; volunteer to drive), and North Carolina (call 888-938-6832 or email Voting@disabilityrightsnc.org to schedule a ride) our members have provided hundreds of free, accessible rides to the polls during the primaries, early voting, and through November 5.

• Creating Accessible Voting Resources – Access the Vote Florida created videos to demonstrate how to use the accessible voting machines and accessible vote by mail in Florida. REV UP worked with election experts and plain language consultants to create plain language state guides for disabled voters for the primaries and the general election for all 50 states and Washington D.C.

• Educating and Supporting Voters – Through accessible machine demonstrations, mock debates, virtual panels, radio shows, and more, REV UP members have worked to educate and support voters with disabilities. Check out this video highlighting self-advocates in California who became peer voting trainers this year. They hosted mock polling places to help prepare their community for Election Day.

• ProjectReady, a REV UP grantee in NYC, worked to engage and train Asian Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities, their families, and their caregivers on voting rights – including through creating multilingual resources. Remember, every polling place must have an accessible voting machine, also known as a ballot marking device. Anyone can use it. You do not need to explain your disability.

• Direct Mail Outreach – In Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Tennessee over 150,000 postcards and direct mailers have been sent to voters with disabilities providing accessible election information.

• Recruiting People with Disabilities as Election Workers – In October, AAPD worked with REV UP Texas to train students with intellectual disabilities in Houston Community College’s inclusive  post-secondary education program VAST Academy on how to become election workers. This project was funded by a grant through the Election Assistance Commission.

Increasing Election Accessibility 

• Training Election Workers – In Alabama, California, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas, REV UP members conducted disability and accessibility training for poll workers. In Virginia, this included using artistic activism and making a mini comic book called, “Be an Accessible Democracy Ally.”

• Polling Place Accessibility Audits – In several states, REV UP coalitions and members have met with county officials and conducted accessibility audits of polling places. In August, REV UP grantee Detroit Disability Power conducted accessibility audits at 220 polling sites, with 160-180 site audits planned during early voting and on November 5.

• Advocating for Plain Language Ballot Measures – REV UP Maine received national media coverage of their advocacy to develop legislation for plain language ballot measures. Did you know that most ballot measures are written at a graduate school reading level?

• Improving Data Collection on Election Accessibility – We led comments and a sign on letter in response to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on their 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS). Twenty organizations joined our comments. The EAVS policy survey collects data on voting policies across states and is an important opportunity to learn more about the disability vote. A challenge to voting rights work is that the laws are different in each state, so this survey is crucial to understanding the landscape from the national level down to the state and local level. We received a personal email from the EAC Director of Research thanking us for our comments and noting that they accepted two of our suggestions for questions around polling place accessibility and voter ID laws.

• Systemic Improvements to Voting Access – The Department of Justice issued new guidance (for the first time in 8 years) on voting rights for people with disabilities and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Department made it clear that the ADA applies to polling places, election websites, and it also applies to absentee and in-person voting experiences. We are hopeful for what it could mean for expanded options for electronic ballot return for people with disabilities. It also emphasizes that people with disabilities have the right to voter assistance, which may be useful in combating the criminalization of voter assistance happening in states.

  Very importantly, the Department of Justice stated that the ADA categorically prohibits states from disqualifying people who have intellectual or mental health disabilities from registering to vote because of their disability or guardianship status of people with disabilities and people under guardianship cannot be held to a higher standard for demonstrating capacity to vote. The Department of Justice thanked AAPD directly for the ways in which our education, voter engagement, and advocacy efforts contributed to this guidance.

Fighting Voter Suppression

• Accessible Absentee Voting – Members of our Wisconsin REV UP partner, the Wisconsin Disability Vote Coalition, filed a lawsuit in the spring advocating for the right for people with disabilities to receive and mark ballots electronically, as paper mail ballots are not accessible.

• Protecting the Right to Voter Assistance –

  • REV UP Texas served as a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the state’s 2021 law that restricted voter assistance. Multiple REV UP members testified in the trial about how the law impacted them. This fall (October 2024), a federal court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and affirmed the law violated the Voting Rights Act!

  • REV UP Alabama engaged in legislative advocacy to try to stop a bill that would restrict voter assistance around absentee voting. When the law passed, several coalition partners filed a lawsuit. This fall, a federal court granted an injunction saying that parts of the law were not enforceable. REV UP Alabama members and partners like the Alabama League of Women Voters, who’d been closely following the case, immediately began doing outreach and providing assistance, as requested, making the most of the limited days left for voter registration.

Growing Visibility

• Nonpartisan Candidate Engagement – REV UP Connecticut hosted a hybrid nonpartisan forum with state congressional and senate candidates and surrogates from the Presidential race. REV UP Pennsylvania created a disability candidate survey and received responses from many candidates running for Pennsylvania representative offices and the state Attorney General. REV UP grantee ProjectReady hosted a nonpartisan candidate meet and greet highlighting local races in New York City. In St. Louis, REV UP grantees hosted a disability candidate forum where fourteen candidates for federal, state, and local offices and from five different political parties came to meet people with disabilities and answer questions.

• Celebrating the Disability Vote – REV UP members have used creative tactics from eye-catching “Power the Disability Vote” yard signs in Texas to “Dance the Vote” parties at the statehouse in Missouri to draw attention and joy to the power of our community.

• Disability Voting Rights Week Proclamations – From the county to the state level, REV UP members engaged with their elected officials to designate the official 2024 Disability Voting Rights Week. View the 2024 DVRW proclamations.

• Improving Access to Information for Disabled Voters – We spearheaded efforts to make the presidential debates more accessible, engaging the support of over 90 disability organizations and allies. While CNN failed to respond to our requests regarding the accessibility of their June debate, our advocacy with ACB and their parent company Disney Entertainment resulted in positive outcomes ahead of the September 10 debate. Disney reviewed our recommendations and engaged with us directly to implement changes that increased accessibility for disabled viewers.

• Live ASL Interpretation During Vice Presidential Debate with DPAN TV – AAPD was proud to sponsor our partners at the Deaf Professional Arts Network (DPAN) TV to provide a live ASL interpretation stream during the Vice Presidential Debate on Tuesday, October 1. Read our press release announcing this partnership here, and if you missed the debate, you can watch it through DPAN TV here.

• Responding to Ableist Comment by former President Donald Trump – When former President Donald Trump made an inaccurate and ableist statement about Vice President Kamala Harris, AAPD responded with a statement which received coverage on CNN, The View, New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and others, including through disability community lenses in Disability Scoop and Mother Jones.

• Disability Vote Ad – AAPD joined together with regional and local disability organizations to produce a video highlighting the power of the disability vote and calling on political candidates and elected officials to pay attention to the 61 million disabled people across the country and the issues that matter most to us. The 60-second ad, and a 30-second version, will run across digital platforms in critical swing states–Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin–and urges candidates to “fight beside us or get out of the way.” Watch the disability vote ad. 

• Improving Disability Voter Data – AAPD worked with the YWCA to add disability-specific questions to their 2024 National YWomen Vote survey, which provides data on the top priorities and experiences of women heading into the 2024 elections, with a focus on women of color and historically excluded groups. Read the top priorities of disabled women, according to the survey results.