Politics

Why 40 million eligible voters are restricted from many polling places

Published

1 year ago

November 11, 2024

Why 40 million eligible voters are restricted from many polling places

In November 2012, when I was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I cast my ballot at one of the dining halls. As someone who grew up in California, I was excited to feel that my vote “mattered” in a swing state. The building had an elevator and could be entered relatively easily if someone had a cane or required a wheelchair.

A year and a half later, in my final weeks at UNC, my polling place during the 2014 primary had changed to the local Hillel, just off campus. As I approached the building, the first thing I noticed was that it had two steps to get in, which made me think of how it might be harder for my physically disabled classmates to vote, to say nothing of my disabled Jewish classmates who wanted to freely practice their faith and meet similar people.

Just because a polling place has an accessibility symbol does not mean it is fully accessible for people with disabilities.

I thought about those moments earlier this month as early voting began in swing states like Georgia and North Carolina. The difference in those structures tells a story about how religious institutions are exempt from the same rules that require other private businesses and government buildings to accommodate people with disabilities. And it might compromise those people’s ability to cast their ballot.

A major reason for the discrepancy comes from the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Section 504 of the ADA stipulates that any employers and organizations that receive financial assistance from the federal government cannot discriminate against people with disabilities. Most famously, in 1977, disability rights activists led by Judith Heumann, who died last year, occupied a federal building to force the federal government to implement that section.

But the ADA explicitly exempts religious institutions from Title III, which bans discrimination against people with disabilities in places of public accommodation, such as businesses open to the public. Religious organizations like the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic League actually lobbied for protection when the law was being written. William Bentley Ball, who was called God’s litigator, specifically warned that religious freedom “will be directly involved if churches and religious schools are not expressly exempted from the terms of the ADA.”

A new report from Rutgers University found that over 40 million eligible voters are disabled. Many of them may have to adjust their plans to avoid polling places that are difficult to access. According to Christianity Today, about 20% of polling places are in churches. And the raw number of religious institutions that serve as polling places masks the actual challenges given that religious institutions might be the only polling place in a county.

“Once you start to disaggregate the numbers and disaggregate the data, you see a different picture, where in particular states, it can be up to 50% — so half of all polling places — are located in churches or religious institutions,” Jasmine Harris, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, told me.

This is not to say that nonreligious institutions are perfect. Far from it.

Take the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina. On the first day of early voting in Georgia, more than 300,000 people cast their ballots. In North Carolina, more than 1 million people cast their ballots. People turning out in droves to vote is a moment for celebration in the United States. But obstacles remain to that turnout: In North Carolina, 25% of polling places are in churches. In Georgia, the share is 32%.

Harris also noted that just because a polling place has an accessibility symbol does not mean it is fully accessible for people with disabilities.

“That only gets you so far. That only would tell you whether the outside structure has any barriers, any architectural barriers,” she said. But that does not say what the training is like for poll workers or if the technology is accessible for people who are blind or low-vision.

“We have a really messy system that’s really problematic and has the guise of accessibility,” she said. And while it may not be an issue for a church to be a polling place in a city with many other options, in a place like Davidson Township, Pennsylvania, with only 549 residents, the sole polling location is a church, meaning that voters with disabilities may have few alternatives. In the 2020 election, according to Christianity Today, every polling place in Rincon, Georgia, population 11,000, was a church.

This is not to say that nonreligious institutions are perfect. Far from it. Thirty-four years after the ADA was enacted, many places of public accommodation and even government buildings remain wholly inaccessible. But to have a specific carveout for religious entities creates just one more barrier for people with disabilities. And ironically, it locks them out of using their voice to change circumstances to make the world more accessible.

Eric Garcia

Eric Garcia is the senior Washington correspondent and bureau chief for The Independent. He is the author of “We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation.”

Politics

2028 Dem veteran? Uncle Sam wants you.

Published

9 hours ago

March 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In the 15 days since President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on Iran, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is approaching nearly a dozen media appearances, offering his often visceral reaction to the conflict.

Gallego, a 46-year-old combat veteran who deployed to Iraq as an infantryman in 2005, has emerged as a blunt, clear voice for the Democratic Party on foreign policy, speaking as someone whose own generation experienced the forever wars.

There he was on BLN’s “The Source with Kaitlin Collins” saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio was doing “CYA” and noting that the “MAGA base is pissed.” There he was sitting down with the AP speaking “as someone who lives with PTSD,” adding “it’s not been an easy week.” And there he was on Derek Thompson’s podcast, speaking about “going town to town searching for insurgents” 21 years ago, “but there was no clear direction of what victory looked like, what the end goal was, what was going to be the after-action report on Iraq.”

Gallego isn’t alone. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a Navy captain who flew combat missions during Operation Desert Storm in 1990, has also racked up a run of high-profile media appearances, as has former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer who deployed to Afghanistan. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who served in Afghanistan in the Army’s 82nd Airborne, went on local radio this week to link Americans’ affordability woes to the war.

In a year after many Democrats pined for a metaphorical fighter, the party is now having a conversation with itself about whether it needs a literal fighter — a veteran who can speak with credibility on issues of war and national security.

In an interview with Blue Light News, Gallego spoke of “dodging bullets, IEDs, RPGs, clearing towns and then coming back to the same towns with insurgents” and of “losing friends and still not understanding what the end goal was the whole time.”

“It leaves a mark on you, and you start seeing it happening again, you know, you don’t really think about the politics,” Gallego said. “You think about the people who are going to be potentially dying. And that’s why I think I was not hesitant to speak my mind on that.”

Later this month in San Antonio, Texas, Gallego will join VoteVets Action for its third town hall featuring potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates, promising “fresh voices to the national conversation — those who have worn the uniform and served alongside us, who connect with everyday Americans others can’t,” according to a promotional video. (They’ve also done town halls with Buttigieg and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin.)

“On foreign policy, the Dems need a candidate who is seen as strong/tough — not in rhetoric or bravado political platitudes but who conveys a sense of judgement and resolve with which voters connect instinctively,” said Doug Wilson, the former assistant secretary of Defense for Public Affairs during the Obama administration and co-lead of Buttigieg’s 2020 foreign policy team.

The “Iran war underscores the need” for such a candidate, Wilson added.

Whomever the Democrats select as their nominee could potentially face a Situation Room-steeped ticket deep with national security credentials, including a Marine Iraq war veteran in Vice President JD Vance or Rubio, with his secretary of State experience.

Depending on how the many conflicts the U.S. is engaged in at the moment resolve, that experience could cut against them.

But right now, Democrats who can match those bona fides have some currency others without them can’t.

“That’s obviously going to be helpful to them,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way. “It’s gonna be a big part of what they’re talking about for the next little while. But you know, how long does it last? We just don’t know, right? In my professional lifetime, foreign policy stuff and national security has mattered in a presidential race once — in 2004. That’s it. Otherwise, it comes up, but it’s not driving the conversation.”

Some potential Democratic candidates without such credentials have still managed to break through amid the Iran news cycle. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) has said the White House has treated aspects of the war “as a video game,” in a clip gaining traction on X. “When American service members killed in action are returning to the United States in flagged-draped coffins, and even more Americans have lost limbs or suffered terrible brain injuries or are fighting for their lives, this White House treats war like a game, and it’s a disgrace,” Ossoff said.

When asked whether military service is an essential for the party’s eventual nominee, Gallego acknowledged there is a benefit for someone who can “speak with that type of credibility.”

“I’m not the type of person that’s like, ‘you have to be a veteran — Iraq War veteran,’” Gallego said. “This is a democracy. We’re still one, and there’s a lot of people that can bring valuable experience and knowledge. But you know, someone that actually has a nuanced understanding of foreign policy; that doesn’t go to the total knee-jerk reactionism that sometimes we see where we go to the point of, you know, isolationism; or the other way, where we go to full neocon. There needs to be a very balanced way to how we approach the world.”

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