My brother loves politics. But he thought his disability meant he couldn’t vote.

[KamaAina]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/22/my-job-was-to-engage-voters-but-i-missed-one-close-to-home-my-disabled-brother/

My brother and I sat in stiff chairs in a government office, a clipboard of paperwork in front of us. He’d recently moved, and we were there to sign him up for health care. Flipping through the papers, he came upon a voter-registration form.

“People like me can vote?” my brother asked.

I had to look away from him for a moment so that I wouldn’t cry in the middle of the waiting room. Like millions of Americans, my older brother lives with a disability. He was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which means he hears voices and battles mood fluctuations. He also struggles with some learning disabilities that resulted when doctors used forceps to help deliver him as a baby. Thanks to good doctors, medication and a remarkable day program, he is doing well. He is strong, compassionate and funny. He watches the news and is well informed; we’ve discussed the Islamic State, North Korea, the poor, jobs, what to do about the homeless and the presidential campaign. But he didn’t know he could vote.

When I was certain I could answer him in a steady voice, I responded. “One hundred percent yes. You can vote,” I said. “As long as you haven’t been declared incompetent by a court of law, you have the same rights as I do and everyone else in this country. Fill it out, and we’ll vote together on primary day.”

“As long as you haven’t been declared incompetent by a court of law”. Such declarations are rampant in L.A. County and likely elsewhere. Disenfranchisement takes many forms.

[CentralMass]

1. On a side note, Trump's mocking of the New York Times reporter a few months back shows his lack of

character.

[Arkansas Granny]

2. That was such a disgusting display. It's still difficult for me to fathom how any adult

could do and say something so ugly and stupid.

[renate]

3. I don't understand how that didn't end his campaign there and then

Well, I do understand, because his original supporters are such terrible people, but I don't understand how, with that on the record, so many Republican voters have persuaded themselves to get behind him just because he's not Hillary. Most people who are casually Republican aren't deliberately horrible people, not in real life, so I don't get how they can pretend that Trump's display of cruelty didn't happen.

[KamaAina]

4. Because people with disabilities, by and large, are invisible to the rest of society

even more so than racial or ethnic minorities.