Voting Access for Hoosiers with Disabilities

Every eligible Hoosier has the right to vote with dignity, privacy, and independence — regardless of physical, sensory, intellectual, or developmental disability. As Secretary of State, I will make disability access a standing priority for the office, not an afterthought handled only when a complaint comes in.

THE PROBLEM

• Indiana's public-facing ADA polling place checklist has not been updated since 2018 and covers physical access only: parking, ramps, doorways, machine height.

• The Secretary of State's voters-with-disabilities webpage has no plain-language version, no guidance on curbside voting, and no information for voters who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or have sensory sensitivities.

• Voters under guardianship, and those living in nursing, assisted living, or psychiatric facilities, retain the right to vote unless a court has specifically revoked it ; a protection the state does not clearly communicate.

• Indiana Disability Rights and the U.S. Attorney's Office already survey early voting sites through the “Access the Vote” program. This is valuable work the Secretary of State's office should co-own and scale statewide, not leave to outside partners alone.

MY COMMITMENTS

• Modernize the ADA polling place checklist,

  • add sensory accommodations, communication access for Deaf/hard-of-hearing voters, and plain-language/cognitive accessibility and not physical access alone.

  • Require every accessibility voting machine be verified, powered on, and tested before polls open, with results logged.

• Formalize and expand “Access the Vote” statewide,

  • partner directly with Indiana Disability Rights so every county, not a subset, is surveyed with specific, tracked fixes ahead of Election Day.

• Standardize and publicize curbside voting,

  • so it is available and clearly advertised in every county..

• Rebuild the Secretary of State website for real accessibility,

  • meeting current WCAG standards, with plain-language and Easy Read materials for voters with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

• Clarify guardianship voting rights publicly,

  • so voters, families, and care facilities know that guardianship does not automatically strip the right to vote.

• Respond to every accessibility complaint with a same-day remedy and a long-term fix,

  • listen, resolve the immediate barrier with the local clerk, then review policy so the same barrier doesn't recur at that site or others.

• Support mail-in ballots and early voting as standard options for every Hoosier,

  • recognizing both meaningfully increases access for voters managing chronic illness, mobility limitations, or unpredictable symptoms.

WHY THIS MATTERS

This is personal, not theoretical. I've spent time this year in direct conversation with mobility-access advocates like Thomas Quiter about what's actually missing for accommodations in elections across the nation. Accessibility isn't a compliance checkbox, it's whether a fellow Hoosier can exercise their fundamental right to vote with the same independence and privacy as anyone else.