I voted early today at my local voting center and, is my usual custom for the past few years, I used the curb-side voting for handicapped. While being processed and verified, the election worker commented that they had seen an increase this year of adults, well dressed, driving up to the curb-side handicapped voting area thinking it was VALET VOTING. As in, they could sit in their car, avoid the lines, have an election worker fetch a ballot from inside, fill out the ballot in the comfort of their car and it’s returned to inside for tabulating by the same election worker.
I assumed he was referring to ignorant, first time 18-year old voters unfamiliar with the voting process. Nope…mostly in their late 20’s or 30’s. The last couple drove up in a late model Mercedes wearing matching, upscale leather jackets. No handicapped placard or plate. They didn’t want to be bothered finding a parking space, walking into the building and standing in line. They were declined and pointed to the proper entrance to the voting polls.
One could say that at least they are Voting ……. but
If you hold your franchise lightly, it’s likely to slip away.
Is this curbside voting area clearly labeled as being for the handicapped? Anyway, if they think that they can vote in this way, they are probably first time voters, even if they aren’t 18 years old.
I don’t understand the relevance of the car make and attire comments.
If a handicapped placard is required, there should be signs indicating as much.
It was data that was important to the election worker. It’s relevance to me is that whenever I’ve encountered vehicles with no handicapped tag or placards parked in handicapped spaces, it is always an expensive late model car.
The curb-side voting was in a handicapped parking zone with this signage at each space: https://www.myparkingsign.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/ada-handicap-reserved-parking-sign-k-1433.png;
this painted in each space: https://www.nmeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Accessible-Parking-Spots.jpg;
and this one at the head of every parking space: https://electionsusainc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sign_handicap3.jpg.
Precisely how much more signage do you believe is necessary before someone gets the idea that this is a space reserved for handicapped voters?
Not American, I am British. But that extra curbside voting sign would confuse me also. Upon seeing this sign I would presume that for voting day the disabled parking spaces were being used for a new kind of drive-through voting system, created to encourage those short on time to vote.
As an American, I can tell you that the large prominently displayed Handicap symbol ON the curbside voting sign is a clear and obvious directive that this is for people who are disabled and can’t stand in line.
Anybody who wouldn’t take it as such is either massively ignorant or purposely blind as to what a supremely common usage symbol means. There tend to be a lot more of the latter than the former, and more commonly to be found driving late model expensive cars. All? No, not by any means. But it happens enough that it tends to be more than simple confirmation bias as to who is prone to be doing it.
Twirly, in the US, there is no option to re-use the handicapped spaces for anything other than what they are, handicapped access spaces. They are considered inviolate by the government, and this is well-known to all drivers. I’m not saying that people who should not be using them never use them — it happens, but they can be fined for doing it — but all drivers know that those spaces ALWAYS mean handicapped parking only. Government and business sites are required by law to leave a certain amount of spaces as handicapped only.
Ideally, “are considered inviolate by the government,” but in practice, oh, not so much. I can’t tell you how much indifference and inaction I got in one particular shopping plaza when able-bodied, non-placard holders took spots.
One one infuriating occasion, a woman (with a placard, I must admit) took the only spot … to use her cell phone. She did not enter a store. I of course, had to part thirty yards away to wheel 150 pounds of mother+wheelchair in the rain to the store.
“whenever I’ve encountered vehicles with no handicapped tag or placards parked in handicapped spaces, it is always an expensive late model car.”
I wonder if there are any regional trends to this? Perhaps a correlation to how steep the fine is? (If the fine is very high and/or heavily enforced, there may be an income effect, as in, those with fancier cars tend to be more able to afford the fine.) I have not noticed any particular trend in who uses the handicapped spaces inappropriately in my area. I’ve seen expensive cars and I’ve seen old beat-up rustbuckets using the handicapped spaces. I’ve also never seen it actually enforced, though.
They need to check out mail in ballots, they’re life changers.
Unfortunately, my state won’t let you get absentee ballots unless you swear you are out of town during the election. We also don’t have early voting, so the lines are impressively long. I think there are measures to change this in the future, thankfully.
But to the original point, I could see where there could be confusion – I wouldn’t assume the couple was acting out of entitlement unless they protested being declined the privilege of curbside voting.
Strictly mail in up in the PNW, so I’m showing some ignorance but if you’re disabled or without transportation…they still require you to go to the polls?
And we’re supposed to be fearing voter fraud and there’s no suppression of marginalized folks my foot! Icky.
While it sounds like these workers determined that these particular people were not disabled, please do not forget that there are “invisible” disabilities such as epilepsy or fatal allergies that don’t allow people to get out of the car and go into an unfamiliar or known toxic/triggering building.
If they made an honest mistake and weren’t rude and entitled about it, I give them a pass. With initiatives to increase voter turnout we have the options of day-of voting and early voting and my county has offered a drive-thru line to drop off mail ballots, etc. (I’d honestly not be too surprised if valet voting becomes an option in some places in the future)… and not to make it a political discussion but there are people deliberately spreading misinformation as well for who-knows-what-reasons… so I’m willing to give them credit for the effort, assuming that they did thank the volunteer, find a parking spot and wait in line or make another appropriate plan.
If this is a significant increase just in this most recent election, I’m inclined to think there’s some misinformation being passed around rather than these people intentionally trying to exploit the system. When I was an elections worker, we routinely got situations where a single source (like a college or community newsletter) with a lot of reach passed on some bad/incorrect information without checking it and before you know it we have 20 voters from the same student housing complex showing up at the wrong address or 50 thinking they can same-day register with a personal letter. It could be entitlement, it could also be that they’re under the impression that curbside voting is an option available to everyone, rather than a specific accommodation for people with disabilities.
Showing up at the wrong POLLING PLACE, that should say.
The drive up to the curb-side handicapped voting has an abundance of signage with handicapped logos on them. The actual curb-side voting parking IS a handicapped parking zone with the usual handicapped parking signage AND a sign board in each space designating it as curb-side handicapped voting. The main entrance is clearly marked and you had to drive past it to get to curb-side voting on the other side of the building. A person would have to be utterly oblivious of normal driving signage to misunderstand it to be valet voting.
After what I’ve seen from voters, no level of complete obliviousness surprises me anymore. It’s not nice to be that oblivious, absolutely, but it’s a step down from intentionally abusing the system.
Also, your mention of the layout is significant, because I’ve never worked at a polling place that used handicapped parking spots for this purpose. It was usually just the closest 2-3 street parking spaces to the polling site, so that’s what I was picturing (and others may be as well). You didn’t mention that it was in the handicapped parking in the original post, that’s a pretty significant piece of context.
If a parking lot is accessed by the public an accessible passenger loading zone must be provided. It’s the law. The closest 2-3 parking spaces are supposed to be designated handicapped parking. That’s the law: https://adata.org/factsheet/parking
I’m not talking about the existence of handicapped parking spaces, I’m aware of that and of the various laws that require it.
What I’m saying is that, until you specifically said so, it never even occurred to me that curbside voting would be taking place in said handicapped parking spaces — that’s not universal, and I’ve never worked at a site that did it that way. What I was picturing (and perhaps others were as well) was literal curbside voting in street parking spaces that aren’t normally designated as handicapped parking. My point is that because that detail was left out, I was picturing a situation with a greater potential for legitimate misunderstanding, and my original comment was based on that.
I wish I could say I was surprised by this – but in an age where more and more people seem to have an overblown sense of entitlement, this is the logical outcome. I trust that ALL of the election workers are shutting this down every time it happens so that people who actually NEED the curbside service can use it.
This hardly seems likely to be true. Granted, I’ve not seen everything in my fifty three years, but I’ve seen some interesting things. There is no possible way to mistake handicapped parking for “valet” anything. This tale seems made up entirely out of whole cloth so that we can shake our heads over the supposed decline of our juniors. No metropolitan polling place that I’ve seen affords parking anywhere close to the building. These are generally institutions in local municipalities and they aren’t designed with convenience or comfort in mind, but share a utilitarian form and function. So- no. I don’t think this one is likely to have transpired, at least in the US.
Well, it was the Admin’s story, so I seriously doubt she made it up (I didn’t click on the links, but in the comments she’s shared pics of the signage). Also, I live in a fairly big city and we vote at places like libraries, community centers, and churches, so there are definitely plenty of parking spaces close to the building, including handicapped parking. I’m sure in a metropolis such as NYC, there probably isn’t parking readily available, but Admin doesn’t live in NYC either. It’s also not about her “juniors” because she says she assumed they were young, but was informed otherwise. I do think that many people out there are sharing exaggerated or outright false stories related to voting, but I don’t think this is one of those times.
Voting places where I’ve lived have included public schools, the “field house” of a private university’s athletic complex, and a fire station. The school parking areas are often reserved for faculty and staff, but there’s free though unpredictable on-street parking half a block from my current voting place.
I wouldn’t count on finding parking that close to the parking place in Manhattan, or in Somerville or Arlington, Mass., but plenty of people take their chances and/or double park. In more suburban areas, the chances of free or cheap short-term parking near the school or other polling place are higher. (And in densely populated areas, people are less likely to be voting more than a few blocks from where they live.)
Your comment is an example of a debate fallacy called “appeal to ignorance”. Your ignorance of the existence of many polling places across the US that use community centers, churches, synagogues, fire stations, civic clubs with ample, close parking isn’t proof of anything except that you don’t know something.
In Manhattan (and i most of the rest of the five boroughs, save much of Staten Island and maybe some parts of eastern Queens and the north Bronx), you walk to your polling station. Higher population density means there are more precincts, hence places to vote. Out of the five apartments where I’ve lived in NYC, all of my polling places except one were schools; none had parking.
In my state, we do not have curbside voting for the disabled. You have to come into the polling place, or else have submitted an absentee ballot ahead of time. It’s a really cool idea, though, and I’d love to see it being rolled out to more places. It’s a shame to see someone taking advantage of a benefit intended for those who actually need it, but right now the disabled have a terrible time voting and are often disenfranchised purely by difficulty of getting to a polling place. My state recently added early in-person voting, which is nice, but I’d like to see more handicapped accessibility. I’d be willing to put up with a few jerks abusing the privilege if it meant more people got to vote overall.
I’ve never been registered to vote in a location that had this option, and it’s honestly the first time I’ve heard of it. I guess that’s the luxury of living in a place where polling stations have parking available. I usually vote early, or absentee because I’m out of town the first week of November, so I’ve been lucky to never have long wait times to vote.
As long as the couple in question didn’t cause a scene or demand special treatment once they were informed about their mistaken regarding ‘valet voting’ I don’t see this as an etiquette issue. It could be first time voters, first time voters at that polling station, misinformation, or truly clueless people. I do have to agree with others that their car and their fashion choices really aren’t relevant to this story unless you’re trying to paint a picture of “those entitled rich people abusing the system”. I see both high end cars and clunkers without placards in the numerous handicap spots around my office. Entitlement or laziness seems spread fairly evenly across income.
I’m struck less by the presumption and more by the idea that one would be OK with handing off a ballot to someone else to walk over to the balloting area. That just seems a little iffy.
The completed ballot is placed in a plastic sleeve (all black) with about an inch of the top sticking out…enough to load it into the ballot counting machine with seeing what the voting was. And there is a supervising election official watching over it all. I’ve voted this way for years.
Apart from what Admin mentioned, pollworkers in most places are heavily trained and supervised. In the city where I attended college, it was procedure for absentee ballots to be delivered to the ward where the person would vote and it would be processed through the line (basically, a pollworker would walk it through the same procedure that a voter would go through if they showed up in person) and fed into the machine by a pollworker. Knowing this, having participated in this process, I never had any qualms about voting absentee. I knew the systems and safeguards that were in place and I trusted them. It wasn’t like handing off my ballot to a random stranger.
In my state, there has been some discussion about a so-called loophole in the curbside voting because one is not required to provide proof of disability to use this method of placing one’s vote.
The curbside voting is also notably available to citizens over 65 years of age. Not all 65+ people are disabled and have the right to use the disabled parking spots…
Prior to voting I have to sign a document swearing that I am handicapped. The placard in the front window helps.
Okay. But what are the able bodied seniors (over 65)
supposed to do? Is their only choice to break the law by using the clearly marked disabled parking spot?
It is unfortunate that America has undertaken such systematic voter suppression efforts that line ups to vote are such a deterrent. If American law-makers wanted people to vote, they’d ensure that there were sufficient polling locations and that voting would only take a few minutes. Anyone can find the time for that. It seems crazy that many Americans, especially those from marginalized communities expect to stand in line for hours to exercise their rights.
There is early voting. Quite convenient.