| >From Our Friends at the National Disability Rights Network
|
| The Election Protection Coalition is once again hosting the
| 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline, where voters can call to report problems
| and receive advice on what to do. The Election Protection Coalition
| is a nonpartisan alliance of civil rights and civic organizations
| committed to protecting the rights of all voters to cast their
| ballot. The hotline (1-866-OURVOTE/687-8683) is an immediate, on-
| the-spot resource staffed by lawyers, law students and other
| volunteers trained to resolve voting problems.
|
| For those of you who are not familiar with the Election Protection
| Coalition, below is a more detailed description about the Election
| Protection effort. Election Protection will only have lawyers and
| volunteers on the ground available to go to (some) polling places
| in 20 states (Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,
| Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi,
| Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South
| Carolina, and Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin). However,
| Election Protection is also happy to walk voters in other states
| through their problems on the phone. Attached in both Word and PDF
| is a flier for the disability community about the Election
| Protection hotline. The logo and other picture in both versions
| have been given alt-tags, so they are readable with screen
| readers.
|
| We encourage voters with disabilities that encounter voting issues
| to contact the hotline so that we as a community can continue to
| catalog and pinpoint the issues that voters with disabilities are
| facing. The National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) will have
| primary responsibility for providing back-up to the Election
| Protection hotline on accessibility issues for voters with
| disabilities. However, you should know that NDRN will not field
| each and every such call, and therefore most calls may, at least
| initially, be addressed by volunteers with less experience on
| disability voting rights issues; however, these volunteers should
| have most of the basic accessibility information in their state
| manuals.
|
| This will be just the second election in which Election Protection
| will have staff devoted specifically to handling calls from voters
| with disabilities. Therefore, it will be critical that voters with
| disabilities provide feedback to us so that we can work with our
| coalition partners to improve this service for future elections.
|
| Thanks and please visit our website for Election Day resources for
| voters with disabilities:
| http://www.ndrn.org/issues/voting/day/default.htm
|
| Christina Galindo-Walsh, Senior Staff Attorney
| Nat'l Disability Rights Network (NDRN)
| 900 Second Street N.E., Suite 211
| Washington, DC 20002
| Voice: 202-408-9514, Ext. 110
| TTY: 202-408-9521
| http://www.ndrn.org
|

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