In more than a dozen telephone conversations and 175 e-mails asking advocates with disabilities their preferences in this election year, I have found that people with disabilities across the country are angry and this will affect their vote next month.

This includes veterans. The Vietnam veterans with disabilities whom I spoke with told me they did not like having their service time in Vietnam belittled in ads aimed at re-electing George Bush, and instead wanted the president to focus on real issues, such as job protection for themselves and their families, lower health care costs, better health care treatment, guaranteeing a cleaner and healthier environment, stronger support for education of children with disabilities and an honorable ending to the war in Iraq.

Many of the people with disabilities that I spoke with are worried about the president nominating Supreme Court judges who will chip away at the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). “I want a Supreme Court that protects my rights, and a swing in just one vote toward the right means my rights will be gone,” said Haley Johnson, a disabled activist and paralegal.

The lack of jobs in what is supposed to be a growing economy angers many people. “We hear about an economy that’s providing jobs, but I don’t have one,” said Tom Carter, an Army veteran with speech and mobility disabilities.

Amy Johnson has cerebral palsy and has been unemployed for two years. “The economy is not roaring back as this president says it is and people with disabilities are suffering,” she says. “We are unemployed. We are undereducated. We are undervalued as people. What’s he going to do for us if he is re-elected? He’s not saying.”

Carter and Johnson believe the federal government has a constructive role in ensuring that the ADA, for example, is protected. They believe the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is not enforcing the ADA and other civil rights non-discrimination employment laws.

A spokesperson for the DOJ said, “This administration enforces all civil rights laws, and we do so nonselectively.” But a DOJ lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me the department was not enforcing civil rights laws with vigor and the DOJ’s policy was, “Do not produce any new case laws.”

Former Senator and triple amputee Max Cleland, the Georgia Democrat, discussed areas in which he believed people with disabilities would fare better under a John Kerry Administration than under George Bush. Cleland said that a Kerry Administration would enforce the ADA, improve veterans’ benefits and services, provide universal health care for all Americans, support the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Assistive Technology Act, enforce Section 508 of the 1998 Rehabilitation Amendments Act, and educate children with disabilities. He encourages people with disabilities to vote.

“American is stronger at home when we have more people working; when we have a cleaner environment because a cleaner environment means fewer people are sick; when we provide medical services and benefits to our veterans; when we are enforcing civil rights laws; and when we have an America that is fulfilling the American dream for people with disabilities,” Cleland said.

Repeated calls to former Senator Bob Dole, the Republican National Committee (RNC), the Bush re-election committee and the White House to learn why people with disabilities should vote for Bush/Cheney resulted in only one being returned. “The president stands behind the success of his New Freedom Initiatives [NFI] program,” a spokesperson for the Bush campaign told me.

Introduced in August 2000, while George W. Bush was first running for the presidency, the NFI called for increasing access to assistive and universally designed technologies, expanding educational opportunities for Americans with disabilities, and promoting full access to community life. While many people with disabilities publicly lauded the NFI, privately they viewed it as pittance handout. The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives and the Senate never embraced the NFI. And the states, which had to match federal funds in many of the areas, never did either.

The president has his supporters among Americans with disabilities. Jim Lafferty, who is hearing impaired, said the president is doing what he can to lead the nation in a time of war. Still, Lafferty wishes the RNC and the Bush/Cheney Re-election Committee had telecommunications devices for the deaf (TDD) in their offices. The John Kerry/John Edwards campaign has a TTY (teletypewriter) number, though the DNC does not. The DNC and RNC did not return my calls asking why they do not have a TDD or TTY.

Many people with disabilities worry about escalating health care costs and the rising number of people without health insurance in the country. They believe the president is not doing enough to ensure health care is available to everyone who needs it. “During the campaign, the president talks about health care, but why wasn’t he doing anything in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004?” Carter asked.

A Bush/Cheney campaign spokesman said the president has submitted a health care program for all Americans to cover 10 million people over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office and the U.S. Department of Treasury, however, say the bill will only cover between 2 and 6 million people over the next decade. There are more than 44 million people in this country without health care coverage.

John Kerry’s health care agenda calls for government health care programs to expand, offers tax credits similar to the president’s and reimburses businesses for some expensive catastrophic situations.

According to a Harris Poll of the 2000 presidential election, 41% of Americans with disabilities who were eligible to vote actually did vote. This compares with 51% of all eligible voters in America who participated in that election. And while the total number of eligible voters who exercised that right increased by just 2% in 2000 over their participation rate in the 1996 presidential election, among voters with disabilities, the increase was a whopping 10%, up from 31%.

If that trend continues, as the Help America Vote Act of 2002 was intended to ensure, then voters with disabilities could play a key role in choosing the next president. And if my interviews with disability leaders accurately reflect the disability population at large, then President Bush will have to work much harder if he wants this demographic to swing his way.

John Williams has been writing about assistive technology for 25 years. A sample of his book Assistive Technologies: Creating a Universe of Opportunities for People with Disabilities can be seen at www.atn-ctcf.org.

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