Every citizen deserves the right to vote, campaign, stand as an electoral candidate and hold office effectively, but many citizens with disabilities face barriers and lack the support they need to fulfil these rights.
The European Commission released a Guide on good electoral practices in Member States addressing the participation of citizens with disabilities in the electoral process to address this issue. The guide is a part of the Strategy for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2021-2030.
The Commission wrote the guide in collaboration with Member States and within the framework of the European Cooperation Network on Elections, and with inputs from EDF and other disability organisations. It was released ahead of the 2024 European elections and contains good practices and advice that can be applied to the European elections as well as national, regional, or local elections. A number of cases and recommendations were also included in the EDF Human Rights Report on political participation.
We especially note the usefulness of Annex I of the guide, titled “Framework for enabling persons with disabilities to access elections” (page 34). This Annex presents a concrete checklist of actions that Member States must undertake before, during and after the elections. We particularly welcome the framework’s strong focus on meaningfully involving representative organisations of persons with disabilities throughout the election cycle.
Sections of the guide
The key focus of the guide is to highlight good practice cases among Member States, where the needs of citizens with disabilities have been accommodated. Its Annexes contain examples of checklists, instructions and diagrams provided by Member States to demonstrate how its advice can be applied to fit a variety of voting methods.
The guide goes through comprehensive overviews of the electoral process and how it can be improved. It includes:
- EU frameworks and international standards that protect the political rights of persons with disabilities, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
- Environments supporting participation in elections – not only in terms of physical accessibility but also in awareness-raising actions and changing attitudes. One example comes from Finland, where a channel broadcasted debates in “Easy Finnish”.
- Outreach to persons with disabilities during the electoral cycle through improving accessibility in communication and advertising materials. For example, the Netherlands provides an online tool to locate accessible polling stations for persons with disabilities.
- Universal design and reasonable accommodation in the electoral cycle from the perspectives of procedures, facilities and materials. For example, several countries use mobile ballot boxes, where election officials go to the place of stay or residence of certain persons with disabilities.
The guide also analyses the areas of the electoral process that are often overlooked by Member States and proposes solutions to improve accessibility, such as in political advertising. In Spain, political organisations are required to ensure that their public activities are accessible to persons with disabilities. This includes accessible webpages, printed materials in accessible formats, telephone assistance services and alternative audio-visual formats.
Finally, the Annexes provide examples to be used by Member States:
- Annex I presents a concrete framework of actions that Member States can follow.
- Annexes 2-6 present examples of good practices, such as checklists of accessibility requirements of polling stations.
- Annexes 6-11 present comparisons between Member States on issues such as the concept of disability, accessibility of elections and different types of voting options.
What’s missing?
The guide provides an extensive list of examples on the ways that electoral processes can be made more accessible. However, as it is, persons with disabilities will still face concrete differences in their right to vote and right to stand as candidate depending on the EU Member State they live in. Many Member States still maintain legal barriers to the voting rights of, for example, persons with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities.
The guide provides advice on optimising the accessibility of electoral processes but does not have the purpose of addressing the underlying need to grant the right to vote to persons with disabilities regardless of legal capacity. This is (insufficiently) addressed in the Commission’s Recommendation on inclusive and resilient electoral processes.
While the guide represents a useful resource for many electoral bodies on how to better facilitate participation, it is crucial to first address the core issue: many persons with disabilities are still stuck at the first hurdle – having equal electoral rights.
Read the full guide on good electoral practices.