Summary
Accommodation to vote should be made for voters with special needs, including persons with disabilities.
Obligations
Election Parts
Issues
Quotes
- Ensure that persons with disabilities can effectively and fully participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others, directly or through freely chosen representatives, including the right and opportunity for persons with disabilities to vote and be elected, inter alia, by: i. Ensuring that voting procedures, facilities and materials are appropriate, accessible and easy to understand and use; ii. Protecting the right of persons with disabilities to vote by secret ballot in elections and public referendums without intimidation, and to stand for elections, to effectively hold office and perform all public functions at all levels of government, facilitating the use of assistive and new technologies where appropriate.
- It is unreasonable to restrict the right to vote on the ground of physical disability or to impose literacy, educational or property requirements. Party membership should not be a condition of eligibility to vote, nor a ground of disqualification.
- An effort should be made to design election materials that are accessible to disadvantaged voters such as the blind and the deaf. In the absence of these materials, assistance should be provided to enable such voters to vote.
- Handicapped or severely ill people must also have a chance to vote.
- Polling stations should be situated in venues that are accessible to all voters, especially the elderly and the people with disabilities.
- If a voter is unable to sign [the Voters' Register] because of a physical disability or the inability to write, then there will likely be a provision for them to be assisted in voting, either by a voter of their choice or a member of the Commission.
- Voters with special needs, including the disabled, the elderly, students, conscripts, workers (including migrant workers out of the country), foreign service personnel and prisoners who have retained voting rights, should be accommodated.
- [States should foster citizen participation in the electoral process by] guaranteeing that all possible means are used to make all polling stations accessible.
- Election laws may contain special provisions to facilitate voting by persons who are physically disabled, those in hospital or in prisons, those who are out of the country or who cannot come to the polling station for other valid reasons.
- States should foster citizen participation in the electoral process by] safeguarding the right to vote of vulnerable groups (people with disabilities, people who are illiterate, etc.) by adapting polling stations and voting material to their needs.
- There should be clear procedures for the provision of necessary assistance to disabled, illiterate and elderly voters that protect, as far as possible, their right to vote secretly.