Electoral Inclusion and People with Cognitive Impairment
An important part of being a citizen is the exercise of the right to vote in elections for local councils, state governments, or the commonwealth government. This projects looks at what stops people with intellectual disability from voting and offers ideas about what might help people to get ready to vote.
An important part of being a citizen is the exercise of the right to vote in elections for local councils, state governments, or the commonwealth government. However, people with intellectual disability and Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) can find this challenging. Often their name has not been included on the electoral roll or has been taken off the roll.
Commonly, they are not provided with the information or support they need to vote. Sometimes they have never been told about or encouraged to get involved in politics and voting. Through this project, we found that only a few people with intellectual disability/ABI vote in elections. This is different from people in the general public or people with physical or sensory disability. Many more people in the general public or people with physical or sensory disability vote. All people need to be ‘ready’ to vote. However, inclusion in voting for people with intellectual disability/ABI is hard. In this report we provide a lot of information about what stops people being ready to vote. We also provide ideas about what might help people to get ready to vote.
The research team found that being ‘ready to vote’ involves people with intellectual disability/ABI:
- believing in their right to vote
- being supported by the public and people close to them believing that people with disability can vote
- exercising choice and control over every aspect of their lives
- being involved in their communities so that they can see how voting can make a difference
- learning about politics - political concept and ideas, political communication, and how government works
- learning about political parties, politicians, and local political issues
- learning about voting and elections
- having support to vote when there is an electionAll of these things are important.
People should get support with all of them.
Ideas about what needs to be done are written in detail in the final report here.
Partner Organisation
Researcher
Professor Keith McVilly