Disabled Voter Claims He Was Disenfranchised On Election Day

For most of the country, Election Day was an historical event, signaling a significant change to our country's political character. But, as NY1's Susan Jhun explains in the following report, for disabled voters who have had trouble voting in the past, Election Day was just more of the same.

Disabled voter T.K. Small describes his experience at the polls on Election Day as "somewhere between dreadful and horrible."

"The Board of Elections was completely unprepared to use the Ballot Marking Devices, which are designed for disabled voters," said Small.

The BOE was required by law to equip all the city's polling sites with the new accessible machines for this past election.

Although they were at polling sites, voters like Small found they were not at all accessible.

"The machine was pushed up against the wall in between two tables and they had supplies piled up on top of it, and then when they pulled it out, it got unplugged, which set off a whole string of software, electrical problems," Small said.

Once the machine was finally up and running, Small says poll workers could not figure out how to use it. This after Small tried voting at another location, but was told the Ballot Marking Device there was broken.

Unfortunately, Small was not alone that day. The Center for Independence of the Disabled in New York surveyed disabled voters about their experiences on Election Day and found countless complaints.

"What we found over and over again was that poll workers were so uncomfortable with the machine that they actively discouraged people from even using them," said CIDNY Voting Rights coordinator Rima McCoy.

NY1 reached out to BOE and a spokesperson told the station they sent a tech to Small's poll site within an hour of receiving a call and fixed the Ballot Marking Device. However, Small still could not use the machine because poll workers did not know how to work it.

BOE blames that on a lack of funding from the mayor to have dedicated BMD poll workers.

However, CIDNY found training in general was lacking after hearing from poll workers who claimed they only had 20 minutes of training and never touched the machines.

"They hadn't actually ever even handled the machine before until the general Election Day," said McCoy. "So, from my perspective, the Board of Elections could have done a better job just using the time that they had."

In Small's case, the attorney by profession went before a judge twice and spent six hours trying to vote. In the end he had to cast an absentee ballot, which was not counted that day.

"I feel that I was effectively disenfranchised from the right to vote," he said.