Disabled Alaskans faced obstacles in last election, Justice Department investigation finds • Alaska Beacon

Alaska failed to accommodate people with disabilities seeking to vote in various elections in 2022 and 2023, violating federal law, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday.

The findings, described in a letter to the Alaska Elections Board, are the result of an investigation prompted by voter complaints, the Justice Department said. The department said it has asked the board to fix the problems.

“Voting is a fundamental right for all American citizens, and ensuring they have full access to the electoral process is a hallmark of our democracy,” Lane Tucker, U.S. Attorney for the District of Alaska, said in a statement. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to work with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to work toward voting accessibility for all Alaskans.”

According to the results, certain polling places in the state lacked accessible machines that would have allowed people with disabilities to cast their votes privately. This is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Justice Department said.

In some cases, access was blocked by physical barriers, the ministry said in a letter to state officials detailing the violations.

The letter mentions an October 2023 case when a voter with physical disabilities and her son, who uses a wheelchair, arrived at their polling place during the October 2023 Regional Educational Attendance Area election and found “a muddy parking lot full of standing water and a 2-inch step to access the ramp to the entrance,” the information letter states. “Mud, standing water and a 2-inch step are non-compliant features that make maneuvering a wheelchair very difficult. Once inside, the voter had difficulty completing the paperwork, but was not offered assistance. She and her son voted by paper ballot as no accessible machine was available.”

In several locations, voting machines designed to be accessible for people with disabilities were not functional, and in one location the accessible machine was never removed from its packaging, the agency said in the letter.

Other violations cited affected the department’s website, which contains important information for all voters, the agency said. Its letter listed numerous violations that made the website unusable for some disabled people: “No headings, inoperable buttons, no instructions for progress links, low color contrast, landscape-only pages, pages that do not scale properly, no language tag, inadequate error messages, and no instructions explaining the various options.” There were other failures, the agency said in its letter, including the lack of closed captions on language assistance videos and the lack of alternative text for graphics.

The polling places identified as having accessibility issues stretched from Juneau to Fairbanks to the Kenai Peninsula, and several of them were in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, according to a Justice Department list forwarded by the Alaska Division of Elections.

Representatives of the Department of Justice visited polling places in Alaska during the last election to monitor compliance with the Americans for Disabilities Act and other federal laws.

The election authority is striving for continuous improvements for the benefit of voters and is reviewing the points raised by federal officials, a spokesman said.

“The department is reviewing the letter and will work with the Department of Justice to understand their concerns. The department is working diligently to find facilities in each county that meet accessibility requirements and continues to improve its communications,” Brian Jackson, the department’s election program manager, said by email.

Alaska is not the only state where the Justice Department has found discrimination against disabled voters. The department said Tuesday that it plans to submit its opinion on private litigation in Ohio and Alabama over alleged voter rights violations there. Also Tuesday, it said it had reached agreements with two Texas counties over voting websites that are not fully usable for people with visual or physical disabilities. The counties have agreed to make improvements to the websites, the department said.