Our newest blog covers the journey of two members of the NFB of Oregon to expand rights for blind voters in their state

Over the years, the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon has pursued a mix of legislative priorities in the state related to vocational rehabilitation (VR), the Blind Enterprise Program (BEP), and more. BEP is a federally authorized program that trains eligible, legally blind entrepreneurs to manage food, vending, and other business services in federal and state office buildings and properties. Nevertheless, there is still work to be done. Two of our priorities that have yet to be realized are to increase blind representation on the consumer advisory committee of the Oregon Commission for the Blind and to increase protections for qualified blind parents, so that they may be free from harassment from hospitals and social service agencies who question whether disabled people should be allowed to raise children.

A key part of Oregon’s legislative advocacy is our effort to ensure that both members of the NFB of Oregon and non-members are able to cast their vote in public elections, but that can sometimes involve challenges. Oregon has been a mail-in-ballot state since 1998. Only within the last ten or so years has the state been experimenting with a system that allows a voter to fill out a ballot on a webpage, print it out, and mail it to the elections office. This process can sometimes be clunky or time-intensive for voters who may not be comfortable handling paper or accessing the online Oregon My Vote system. It can also create barriers for those who do not have a functioning printer on hand. Accordingly, voter education can both reduce the barrier to entry by keeping our members fresh on the process and remind them to vote.

That’s why since May of 2020, we, Justin Harford, second vice president of the NFB of Oregon, and Ryan McBee, legislative coordinator and board member of the NFB of Oregon, have organized an accessible voting workshop. This workshop explains how blind Oregonians can independently confirm their voter registration; fill out a ballot with JAWS, NVDA, or VoiceOver; and mail it to their county elections office. 

The most important thing is not who or what blind people vote for, but that they vote. We take care to ensure that our voter workshops are nonpartisan. We avoid positions on current or past issues. And we do not criticize or disparage political parties or candidates.

At the NFB of Oregon convention in 2022 and 2023, we presented our “get out the vote” (GOTV) efforts and the steps that members could take to vote by mail. During those gatherings, we also checked with the audience to confirm who was registered to vote. 

Background of Justin and Ryan

We began our journey to voter education and public policy on different paths. Justin had his first meaningful experience of policy work as a staff member at the FREED Center for Independent Living in Grass Valley, California, where he led the organization's policy initiatives. Justin has worked alongside the National Council on Independent Living and with the National Federation of the Blind to support initiatives to eliminate section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows employers who receive a certificate from the Department of Labor to pay subminimum wages to disabled workers. He has also worked to reform work disincentives in Social Security. Through this experience, he quickly realized how disabled people lacked political power. Justin watched as a law in California that required the state to contract only with agencies paying a fair wage ended because of opposition from parents and sheltered workshops. He then saw what happened when those same groups threw their support behind the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act, which is a state-run savings program for eligible disabled people. This act gained over four hundred cosponsors between the House of Representatives and the Senate and soon became law. We were able to pass laws, but only if they were not controversial or if we joined another interest group that had political power. 

After realizing how easy it was for representatives, staffers, and activists to check an individual’s voting history, Justin concluded that part of the puzzle had to do with voting. He threw himself into his first GOTV campaign. He organized an open house in which FREED invited the county elections office to bring an accessible voting machine for consumers to try. Justin then organized a phone bank with five other volunteers to email and call consumers who might have been less likely to vote. He worked with volunteers to create questionnaires for candidates in local elections.

Ryan entered public policy as a high school student interviewing for campaigns for local candidates and conducting city council election debates. He was motivated by a passion for civic engagement, civil rights, and community service. As a political science major at Western Oregon University, Ryan, like many others, believed that elections were influenced by money or candidate qualifications. Through academic research in which Ryan evaluated the number of times in history that only a few votes would have swung an election, he was persuaded of the ability of communities like the blind to influence elections. A recent example is the way that 22,000 votes drove the result of the 2010 gubernatorial election in Oregon. Local and state elections can be decided with even fewer votes.

Ryan first joined the National Federation of the Blind in 2011 as a national scholarship winner and has been active in the Oregon affiliate ever since. 

The Importance of Voting

Our affiliate believes these voter accessibility workshops are important because they offer blind and low-vision Oregonians an opportunity to vote independently and to become active voters. An active voter is someone who participates regularly in elections, not because they are inspired by a particular candidate, but because they understand themselves to be a part of a community, and that voting is a responsibility that they must exercise as part of that community. Active voters participate in every election cycle, not just the presidential election. Active voters, according to Nonprofit Vote, are more engaged with their communities, more likely to volunteer, more likely to follow current events, and more likely to have a sense of agency. Oregon has a legislative advocacy day every two years. When meeting with state legislators, it’s helpful for us to remind them that we vote and to value our legislative priorities with the same attention as any other constituency. 

It's not just about the end result of getting more blind and low-vision people to vote, but the fact that GOTV is a wonderful organizing opportunity to get members involved in substantive activities of the organization. Members can be brought in to be part of the voter workshop. They can also support by spreading the word to others and can provide valuable feedback on specialized issues such as deafblind voter access. 

We look forward to the opportunities that future GOTV initiatives will bring. The workshops on how to check voter registration and to submit a mail-in ballot will of course continue. There may be other opportunities as well. We could ask registrants for our legislative seminar to confirm that they are registered to vote. We can invite the Oregon secretary of state to speak at our convention. We could solicit candidate answers to questions during election cycles. All of these actions would both increase blind and low-vision people's familiarity with the voting process and create opportunities to drive member activism.

Your vote is your voice. It’s our hope that blind and low-vision people find their voice and have the skills to become active citizens through their ballot as part of their Federation journey.