Why some strategies to increase voter access make some concerned about

voting security. From American public media, this is marketplace tech. I'm

Kimberly Adams. Trying to vote when you're disabled.

Trying to vote when you're disabled can present a series of obstacles, but technology can help, even if integrating technology into our election system has its risks.

Back in 2020, several states change their

voting rules with more mail-in, early, and remote voting options which increased

turnout among disabled voters.

I spoke with Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager at the National Disability

Rights Network about finding the right balance of tech integration into our election in order to empower more

disabled voters in the US. When we talk about making sure our elections are secure I

think we do want to be careful with technology but what we talk about is that there's really a balance here, right?

We want to be careful and deliberate in the way that we embrace technology to make sure we're making it as secure as possible,

but it is still a thing that we have to do.

We can't really leave technology out of the process because if we do, we really risk disenfranchising

people with disabilities.

And this is something that we have really a way of thinking

I think we've really adopted for other types of voters like military

and overseas voters.

They can get their absentee ballots electronically, mark them that way, a lot of times even return them that way,

we're willing to take a certain amount of calculated risk in order to make sure that certain folks

aren't disenfranchised.

And we could do the same thing for people with disabilities,

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