Disabled voters win in Wisconsin; legal fights elsewhere

MADISON, Wis. — Trudy Le Beau has voted in every major election since she turned 18 — a half-century of civic participation that has gotten increasingly difficult as her multiple sclerosis progressed. After the Wisconsin Supreme Court outlawed ballot drop boxes in July, the state’s top election official cited a state law that said voters had to place their own absentee ballots in the mail or return them to clerks in person. “I would have to find some way of putting my ballot in my teeth and carrying it to the clerk’s office.” Fortunately for Le Beau, she and other Wisconsin voters with disabilities can get the help they need to return their ballots this November after a federal judge last month ruled that the Voting Rights Act, which allows for voter assistance, trumps state law. A Kansas judge in April dismissed parts of a lawsuit challenging voter assistance restrictions, saying the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud outweighed concerns about voters who may not get the assistance they need. Voters and state agencies in Alaska, New York and Alabama have also raised challenges to absentee voting programs that don’t provide accessible ballots for people with visual impairments or disabilities that make it difficult to fill out a print ballot privately.