Disability Rights Groups Sue State for Access to the Secret Ballot

Wisconsin voters with disabilities face challenges when exercising their right to vote that most residents do not. If simply making it to the polls is one of those challenges, their options for overcoming them are limited. Wisconsin law requires absentee voters to use a paper ballot. Voters who lack fine motor control or have visual impairments can ask for assistance filling out their ballot, but then sacrifice their right to fill out the ballot in secret.

A group of Wisconsin disabled voters, Disability Rights Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters recently filed a lawsuit seeking to allow for fully electronic absentee ballots.

Alexander Shur, who writes for the nonprofit news outlet Votebeat, has been covering this issue and came into WORT’s studios to tell us more about it.

In this photo, Don Natzke is seen in the backyard of his Shorewood, Wis., home on July 31, 2020. Natzke, who is blind, was unable to vote in Wisconsin’s April 2020 election as fear of the COVID-19 pandemic kept him from his in-person polling place and he faced several hurdles casting an absentee ballot.

Photo credit: Will Cioci / Wisconsin Watch

Web posting by Nicholas Wootton

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