AAPD Rev Up Campaign to Increase Voting Accessibility

June 2018 – The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) launched its Rev Up Campaign to “increase the political power of the disability community while also engaging candidates and the media on disability issues.” REV UP stands for Register, Educate, Vote, and Use your Power. To achieve this, AAPD is working with state and national coalitions on methods to increase voting accessibility, promote turnout of voters with disabilities, and protect voters’ rights to participate in elections. This year, National Disability Voter Registration Week is July 11^th-15^th, and organizations such as AAPD have been hard at work coordinating across the nation to address the gap between voting for people with and without disabilities. According to the report, people with disabilities make up over 35 million registered voters in the United States, and 30% of people with disabilities reported difficulties voting in the previous presidential election compared to 8% of people without disabilities. To address this, Rev Up’s Election Accessibility Toolkit was developed to assist “disability advocacy organizations and individual advocates when working with voters and election officials. It also includes information on troubleshooting problems encountered on Election Day, reporting barriers, and additional resources.” In addition, AAPD has produced comprehensive yet easily digestible guides for legislators and regulators on issues that affect the voting ability and power of people with disabilities.

For more information about the Rev Up Campaign and other efforts to increase voting accessibility for people with disabilities, please visit the AAPD’s website at https://www.aapd.com/. [Source: AAPD]