Following is an excellent analysis by NOD's Brewster Thackeray regarding the impact of the disability community in the 2000 presidential election and the difference the disability community may make in the 2004 election. Let's make sure we are all registered to vote, and then follow-up by casting our votes, to continue making the disability community a voting block that can't be ignored!

Jonathan Young
JFA Moderator, AAPD

By Brewster Thackeray
Vice President & Director of Communications
The National Organization on Disability

What politician can afford to overlook one-fifth of the nation's voting-aged population? That massive slice of the electoral pie comprises the roughly 40 million Americans with disabilities who are of voting age. Though not as cohesively identified as other minority groups, the disability vote is one that politicians ignore at their peril.

The 2000 presidential election proved the significant role voters with disabilities can play. Historically, only about a third of people with disabilities vote in American Presidential contests, but this surged to 41 percent in that year's race, according to an N.O.D./Harris poll conducted at the time. Grassroots "Get out the disability vote" efforts deserve much of the credit. So do organized campaigns to ensure that people with disabilities were informed of their right to register and vote; efforts to ensure that service providers met their legal requirement to offer their clients the opportunity to do so; community efforts to make polling places and voting machines more accessible; and, one can assume, the issues and positions that the candidates presented to voters.

The week before the 2000 election, a Harris poll conducted for the National Organization on Disability found Vice President Al Gore trailing Texas Governor George W. Bush, 43 to 48 percent. But that same poll found that people with disabilities overwhelmingly supported Gore, 54 to 30 percent.

Assuming that those latter percentages were indicative of how people voted, and knowing that 41 percent of those with disabilities did vote (comprising 16.4 million people), Bush received almost five million votes from this community. Gore got nearly nine million.

That difference of four million votes made a huge impact in this exceptionally close election. With them, Gore won the popular vote. Without them, he would not have.

What if people with disabilities had voted at the same rate as other Americans - just over 50 percent - while their split on the candidates remained constant? Bush would then have had six million votes to Gore's 10.8 million from this community. The gap between them would have increased by less than a million votes, but recall how close this race was (Gore took the popular vote by 544,000), and that well under a thousand votes would have tipped Florida's final count. If only Florida voters with disabilities had turned out at the same rate as other Florida voters, the Supreme Court would never have had a case to decide.

If people with disabilities voted at the rate of other Americans, Gore would have had a more decisive victory in the popular vote and won the electoral college, likely without challenge. By contrast, if people with disabilities had voted at the lower rate they did in 1996 (31%), Bush would have won the popular vote and secured the Electoral College too.

What message does this give the candidates running for President in 2004?

According to the Harris survey, the now-incumbent President, George W. Bush, did not fare well with the disability vote in 2000. However, he secured a significant minority of this population segment's vote, which he needed. His 2004 campaign should know better than to take this voting segment for granted, and must reach out to it aggressively (unless he is so confident of a landslide that he is willing to cede much of it to the Democrats). Of course, heading into an election season that will demand he focus on domestic issues, disability issues could be a natural focal point for the president's "compassionate conservative" ideology. As he demonstrated in unveiling his New Freedom Initiative in 2001, this President knows that disability rights have a cross-partisan appeal.

During the 2003-2004 primary season, the Democratic candidates were quite responsive on disability issues. Just as they made efforts to connect with other minority groups, including women, Hispanics, African-Americans, and homosexuals, they did substantial outreach to the disability community and its supporters. Howard Dean took an early stand when he released his disability platform on the ADA's anniversary in July, 2003 - the earliest a candidate has brought such a focus to disability in a primary contest. Through the fall, Wesley Clark, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, Dennis Kucinich and Carol Mosely Braun released significant disability statements. Links were posted during the primaries, and remain for those with active websites, at http://www.nod.org/election2004.html.

Clark, Dean, Edwards, Gephardt, Kerry, and Kucinich responded to specific questions that the American Association of People with Disabilities posed to them last fall about including people with disabilities in their campaigns, making judicial nominations, Medicaid, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Clark, Dean, Edwards, Kerry and Kucinich responded to ADAPT's survey about community-based long-term health care. Dean, Edwards, Gephardt and Kerry accepted former Congressman Tony Coelho's challenge to prioritize disability issues.

Kerry, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, has released a comprehensive 22-page disability policy platform. His fellow Vietnam veteran, former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, has been a prominent member of the Kerry team. Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam and uses a wheelchair, has bolstered their candidate's connection to the community, as have a credentialed team of disability advisors.

Many people with disabilities are going to vote Democrat or Republican based on a plethora of reasons that may have nothing to do with disability. Yet certain issues have a particular connection for a population group where only one-third are employed, many of those underemployed; where medical costs and insurance are frequent worries; where the availability of affordable transportation and housing are key to one's quality of life; and where the civil rights promised by the ADA for employment, community services, and access can have a daily impact. Voters who may not have disabilities but who have relatives and friends who do, or who work as caregivers and service providers, will also focus on these issues.

The late disability advocate and "Father of the ADA," Justin Dart, used to tell people, "Vote as if your life depends on it. Because it does." Many have responded to that call in the past, and a variety of advances will make it possible for more to in the future. The Help America Vote Act of 2002, advances in voting machine technology, and the enforcement of polling place compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act are making the voting process ever more accessible. Americans with disabilities made the 2000 election a close one. If they had split their vote differently or gone to the polls in different numbers, history might have been changed. In 2004, with another close election likely, voters with disabilities will play an important role again.