New voting laws in Louisiana pose challenges for voters with disabilities

New laws to protect the 2024 presidential election Fears of fraud are creating unexpected obstacles for some of the country’s more than 40.2 million voters with disabilities, disability rights advocates told CBS News.

Laws in more than 20 states now restrict various elements of absentee voting, including limiting the type of assistance a voter can request. Restrictions like these limit the ability of health workers 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 vote.

“If I owned a nursing home or group home, I would send out a memo to my staff saying, ‘Don’t help anyone, because if you accidentally end up helping two people, you could go to…’ prison,” said Andrew Bizer, a disability rights attorney in New Orleans. “And it also puts people with disabilities in a really terrible situation.”

Many of the new laws were enacted after the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump questioned the security of mail-in voting.

A new study published by the Rutgers Program for Disability Research found that the number of eligible voters with disabilities increased by 5.1% in 2020. Among this 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 impact that restrictive mail-in voting laws could have on next week’s election.

One state facing 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 advocated by Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry, who called them “a boost” to the state’s election protection efforts. She promised that these efforts would “move us closer to being at the top of the nation in election integrity.”

One of the laws signed by the governor prohibits the state from helping more than one person fill out, mail or witness a mail-in ballot – unless the people helped are immediate family members. This new restriction puts caregivers and people who work in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, or group homes at risk of criminal prosecution if they help too many people with their ballots.

Ashley Volion, a policy analyst at Disability Rights Louisiana who has spastic cerebral palsy and has difficulty with mobility, said she relies heavily on a personal caregiver 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 inclusively as possible in the community,” Volion told CBS News.

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

“They can’t help me physically as much as they used to or could,” she said, leaving her to rely solely on her caregivers for support.

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

For those living in a nursing home, federal and state protection agencies are ensuring they can receive support in the form of a visit from their electoral roll. The job of helping more than 22,000 Louisianans living in a nursing home falls to the community’s voter registrars.

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

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

Ellis was unaware of the new laws and said she took action and tried to bring enough people together to help residents. About 20% of Covenant Nursing Home residents do not have family to help them, and even for those who do have family nearby, getting them there to help can be a challenge.

“How are we supposed to do this? Because sometimes I have a hard time getting families to participate in the care of their loved ones,” Ellis told CBS News.

She was able to get local help for her nursing home. Two weeks ago, the township elections official visited Covenant Nursing Home and helped some residents with their mail-in ballots. Many residents left the experience proudly wearing their “I Voted” stickers.

Ellis said the visit meant more than just making sure her residents cast their votes.

“Because those who already feel forgotten already feel like they don’t count. That their votes don’t count now either. It’s just an extra burden on them that shouldn’t be happening,” Ellis said.

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

However, assisted living facilities 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 have to find another way to get help and rely on help from family members. CBS News reached out to several of them and asked them about their experiences, but none of them were willing to comment publicly.

For Bizer, the laws cross a line and violate federal law.

“The Voting Rights Act says that someone with a disability has the right to choose who they want to support,” Bizer said. “It limits that and means that if they help more than one person, the person helping them can go to prison.” 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 in front of state lawmakers earlier this year, saying they would prevent “the collection and delivery of mass mail-in ballots to ballots.” She argued the practice could be “dangerous to voters and an affront to voters and election integrity.”

According to State Department reports, there have been three cases of voter fraud in Louisiana since 2016.

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