New Louisiana election laws creating challenges for voters with disabilities

New laws aimed at protecting the 2024 presidential election from fears about fraud are creating unexpected barriers for some of the nation’s more than 40.2 million voters with disabilities, disability rights advocates have told CBS News.

Laws in more than 20 states now restrict various elements of mail-in ballots including limiting the kinds of assistance a voter can ask for. Restrictions like those limit the ability of health aides and nurses to help prepare a ballot for the people they care for – and some even threaten criminal charges for aides who help too many people to vote.

“If I owned a nursing home or a group home, I [would] put out a memo to my staff saying, ‘don’t help anybody out because if you end up helping two people out by mistake, you could, could go to jail,'” said Andrew Bizer, a disability rights attorney in New Orleans. “And it also puts the folks with disabilities in a really terrible situation.”

Many of the new laws came after the 2020 elections when former President Donald Trump questioned the security of mail-in voting. 

A new study released by the Rutgers Program for Disability Research found that there has been a 5.1% increase in people with disabilities eligible to vote in 2020. Among that growing population, 7.1 million eligible voters with disabilities live in seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This shows the potential impacts that restrictive mail-in voting laws could have in next week’s election. 

One state confronting this problem is Louisiana. In late May, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed a series of laws aimed at increasing the state’s “election integrity.” The laws were first championed by Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry who called them “a boost” to the state’s election protection efforts. She pledged those efforts would “bring us closer to being ranked first in the nation for election integrity.”

One of the laws signed by the governor makes it illegal in the state to assist more than one person with filling out, mailing or witnessing an absentee ballot – unless those being helped are immediate family members. That new restriction places caregivers and those who work at nursing, assisted living or group home facilities at risk of criminal charges if they help too many people with their ballots.

Ashley Volion, a policy analyst with Disability Rights Louisiana who has spastic cerebral palsy and has difficulty with mobility, said she relies heavily on a personal care attendant to assist her with daily tasks. 

“I honestly don’t know what I would do, because they help me live my life as independently and as inclusive in the community as possible,” Volion told CBS News. 

Volion said both her parents live an hour away from her and are getting older.

“They can’t help me out as much physically as they once did or could do,” she said, leaving her to solely rely on her caregivers to assist her. 

Volion is one of 1.1 million voters with disabilities living in Louisiana. It is unclear how many of them rely on aides to assist them with some aspects of their ballot, whether that is to act as a witness or help return their ballot. 

For those residing in a nursing home, federal and state protections ensure that they can receive assistance in the form of a visit from their registrar of voters. The task of helping more than 22,000 Louisianians who reside in a nursing home has fallen to the parish Registrars of Voters.  

CBS News spoke with one woman who works at Convent Nursing Home in New Orleans. In past years, Elizabeth Ellis was one of the few people able to assist residents at the nursing home with their mail-in ballots and was prepared to do the same this year before a concerned family member called.

“She was the first person to come to me and say, ‘I know that this law is a thing,'” Ellis said. “I know that y’all are going to have to sign and you can’t sign for more than one person.” 

Not aware of the new laws, Ellis said she jumped into action to try and pull together enough people to help residents. Some 20% of the residents at Covenant Nursing Home do not have family available to help them, and for even those who do have family nearby, it can be a challenge getting them there to help.

“How are we gonna do this? Because I have a hard time sometimes getting families to be involved in their loved ones’ care,” Ellis told CBS News. 

She was able to get local assistance for her nursing home. Two weeks ago the Parish Registrar of Voters visited Covenant Nursing Home and assisted some of the residents with their mail-in ballots. Walking away from the experience, many residents proudly wore their ‘I Voted’ stickers. 

Ellis said the visit was more than just making sure her residents cast their ballots. 

“For those who are already feeling forgotten, are already feeling that they don’t count. To now not have their votes count either. It’s just an added level of hardship to them that shouldn’t happen,” Ellis said.

According to Ellis, this was the first time the registrar had visited the nursing home to assist since before Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 

However, assisted living and other long-term care facilities are not eligible for this service under Louisiana law and remain at risk of not having enough staff to assist residents with their ballots. CBS News found that there are more than 1,300 long-term care facilities across the state that would need to find another way to get assistance and lean on family members to come out and assist. CBS News reached out to several of them to ask about their experiences, but none of them were willing to speak out publicly.

For Bizer, the laws cross a line, breaking federal law.

“The Voting Rights Act says that someone with the disability has the right to choose whoever they want to assist them,” Bizer said. “This restricts that, and it makes the person who helps them, if they help more than one person, that person can go to jail.” Bizer is representing Volion and Disability Rights Louisiana in a lawsuit against the Louisiana secretary of state and attorney general. 

Louisiana Secretary of State Landry defended the laws before the state legislature earlier this year, saying they would prevent “ballot harvesting the collection and delivery of mass absentee ballots.” She argued the practice could be “dangerous to voters and an affront to voters and election integrity.”

According to reports from the Secretary of State’s office, Louisiana has seen three instances of voter fraud since 2016.

CBS News reached out to Secretary Landry’s office for comment, but they did not respond.