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The National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) is excited to introduce the first-ever episode of the PandA Pod, a brand new podcast. The podcast name, PandA Pod, was inspired by the Protection and Advocacy (P&A) System – P&A…or P and A…as panda, get it? Just like NDRN, the PandA Pod content is all about P&As and provides useful and entertaining training and technical assistance to P&As and our allies in an all-new format. Keep coming back to the PandA Pod for a range of disability rights related topics from some of your favorite NDRN staff and our special guests all year long.
PandA Pod kicks off with a three-part series called Disaster, Disability & Democracy! This series focuses on voting rights and census participation of people with disabilities, and how these areas of democracy relate to disasters and emergencies.
During the inaugural episode, entitled Power at the Polls: Voting Rights When Disasters Strikes, NDRN chats with Mary Ciccone of Disability Rights New Jersey who explains the state’s efforts to get ballots to all voters immediately following Super Storm Sandy, with some important lessons learned. Following Mary’s interview, we check in with Neal Kelley of Orange County Elections in California about elections under the threat of wildfires, and some best practices for advance preparation.
Transcript
Michelle Bishop:
All right y’all, are we ready?
Erika Hudson:
Yes.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
I think we are.
Michelle Bishop:
Here we go. Let’s do it.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Hey….
Michelle Bishop:
Welcome fearless listeners. Today is the first-ever broadcast from PandA Pod.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Hey now!
Michelle Bishop:
If you haven’t heard, PandA Pod is NDRN’s brand new podcast channel designed to deliver training, technical assistance, useful and most importantly entertaining content to the P&As and our allies in an all-new format. Keep coming back to PandA Pod for podcast series on any range of disability rights topics from some of your favorite NDRN staff.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
That would be us.
Michelle Bishop:
And our special guest all year long.
Erika Hudson:
If you’ve tuned in today you’re just in time for our first episode series of Disability, Disaster & Democracy. Where we’re going to be talking about elections and census data and how it all relates to emergency preparedness and disaster planning. But without further ado, let’s introduce our host for the PandA Pod, Justice.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Hi everyone. It is I, Justine “Justice” Shorter. I am the Disaster Protection Advisor here at NDRN and I am absolutely thrilled to be joined here today by my two spectacular co-hosts.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
But let me… And we’ll go into a little bit more, more about the series, but before we do, let’s go ahead and kick it over to Michelle.
Michelle Bishop:
Hey, this is Michelle Bishop, you may know me as your Voting Rights Specialist here at NDRN and I can’t pass up this opportunity to also give a shout out to PAVA #IRL, my video blog, check it out.
Michelle Bishop:
And now let me introduce Erika, Queen of the Pun.
Erika Hudson:
That’s an honor and a privilege to have that name, but my name is Erika Hudson. I’m a Public Policy Analyst here at NDRN and my main focus is Census 2020 that is quickly approaching and I also have the opportunity to work with the rest of our public policy team here at NDRN on various sorts of topics. But so excited to be with you all today and excited for this first series to get started.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Yes, it’s going to be a really phenomenal one. Talking about disasters, emergencies, humanitarian crises. It’s going to be great.
Erika Hudson:
Yes, I’m excited.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
These are difficult topics, but they are worth us having the conversation about it. People are approaching these topics from such unique and innovative ways. It’s really a wonder to the whole, just the great ways that people are trying to protect the rights of people with disabilities and advocate for folks out there on the front lines. It’s amazing.
Erika Hudson:
It’s probably time to talk about it. I mean, 2020 not a small year I would say.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
No, it is a big year. I would say we would go so far as to say big.
Michelle Bishop:
Maybe they’ll be a little election.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Something happening down in November.
Michelle Bishop:
There might be an election.
Erika Hudson:
And of course census year as well.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
We called the big ‘C’.
Erika Hudson:
Do we? Do we?
Michelle Bishop:
I’m not sure that anyone calls it that.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
I think we should. Coining new phrases.
Michelle Bishop:
You heard it here first on PandA Pod.
Erika Hudson:
The big ‘C’.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
It’s so important though, because the election is happening on the heels of hurricane season, which ends in November, but it’s also so important to make sure that everyone is counted, including folks with disabilities and it’s so central when we think about disaster funding, disaster assistance, and that’s a lot of what this series is about. We’re really trying to get at issues at the intersection of disability disaster in democracy. That’s the whole theme of this three-part series that we’ll be doing here over the next few weeks.
Michelle Bishop:
Before we actually get into today’s topic, since I noticed you called November the heels of hurricane season, I’m from New York, we don’t call it that. We call it Midwinter where I am from. So either way it’s less than ideal time I suppose for an election and we don’t know who’s listening today and where they’re from and I would imagine a lot of folks when they think disaster, they think of the States that are typically impacted by hurricanes. But this matters everywhere.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
It absolutely does. So we think about this and some of the most frequently hit states. You think about this in some of your Gulf Coast states. You think about this in terms of the wildfires in California. But yes, as Michelle mentioned, obviously disasters can happen anywhere in the country, right? And you have typhoons that are taking place in the Pacific islands and you have all types of flooding that occurs on a just anytime of the year. Flooding can happen anytime. Also, home fires, there’s all types of emergencies that happen, both natural and manmade that happened that could keep people away from the polls due to displacement or any other number of reasons. And so it’s important for us to just sit down and have the conversation and just look at the myriad of ways that people are impacted by these issues. And let’s figure out what we can do as advocates, as attorneys, as people who care and take it from there.
Erika Hudson:
And that’s why our census data is so important, so we know where people are at all times and whether that’s to prepare for disasters or emergencies or after to see how different communities change over time, especially if they were impacted by any type of disaster that you just said.
Michelle Bishop:
So correct me if I’m wrong, you were referring to data from the big ‘C’?
Erika Hudson:
Yes, the big C. We’ll talk about on our second episode of this series.
Michelle Bishop:
Justice, tell us about today’s episode.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Today’s episode we’re going to kick it off with an episode about voting rights after disasters. So we’ll be hearing from representatives from Disability Rights New Jersey. They’ll be talking to us about a lot of the phenomenal work that they did after Super Storm Sandy in 2012. And then we’re going to kick it over to Orange County and they’ll be talking to us about some of the innovative things that they are doing to ensure that individuals with disabilities have equitable access to elections following disaster. So they are exciting and engaging, captivating conversations. We do hope that you guys will stay with us throughout. Mary, from disability rights New Jersey. Kicks us off, Mary.
Mary Ciccone:
My name is Mary Ciccone. I’m the director of policy. I’ve been with Disability Rights New Jersey and its prior name, New Jersey Protection and Advocacy since 1998.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Awesome. So I initially met you Mary, at the NDRN 2019 Annual Conference and you were attending a round table that was on voting and you mentioned that this concept of voting rights after disaster, so that is where I personally would love to start. Why did you bring up that question and can you talk to us about the importance of voting rights after disasters?
Mary Ciccone:
I brought it up because it’s an experience that here in New Jersey we experienced firsthand and nonetheless as people are now experiencing wildfires in California, hurricanes in Texas and Florida and disasters all over the country. It’s something that I think people need to be prepared for. In 2012, it was a week before the election and we were hit by hurricane Sandy. The problem with hurricane Sandy was it hit the shore pretty hard. A lot of buildings were destroyed, and flooding, and surge and all of that, but throughout the whole state, power was out for weeks throughout the whole state. So, even if you didn’t get the full effect of the storm, the residual effects continued on for several weeks. And because it was a presidential election year 2012 it was one week before the election, we were scrambling. The division of elections was scrambling. The local County officials were scrambling to try to figure out how they were going to hold a presidential election one week after this natural disaster. So it’s something that I think people need to be prepared for because you just never know when disaster is going to strike. And I say it hit the entire state. So it was something that it wasn’t just one little small area, it was statewide.
Michelle Bishop:
and good thing. It was just a minor election.
Mary Ciccone:
Yes. It could have been anywhere worse, so it was a presidential election which has the most people voting and it was a big deal. That was the biggest problem. And basically we were flying by the seat of our pants. The director of the divisional elections and the secretary of state were just every day throwing out emergency rulings to deter on who could vote, where people could vote, all kinds of other stuff. People were just trying to throw up ideas of how we could get people to vote in as many, even though they weren’t living where they normally live, they were displaced, I mean it was a problem.
Michelle Bishop:
So you talked about this a little bit, the power outages, buildings being destroyed and I think a lot of our listeners aren’t going to remember exactly how devastating Super storm Sandy was. How badly did that shake up the traditional model of polling place voting?
Mary Ciccone:
There were certain counties like Ocean County where many polling places just weren’t available, period. They either had no power or their polling place was damaged beyond repair, or at least in time for the election. So they either had to find new polling places, they had to try to find places that people could get to. Because you got to remember not only were polling places not available, certain roads were impassable. There were trees down everywhere. It was a problem. And even in other counties, as I say, the problem was statewide because power was out. So a lot of polling places just couldn’t be used because there was no power. So the voting equipment couldn’t be used in those locations. So there was suddenly they had to try to change election locations. The state rules regarding vote by mail people were like, “well, maybe I can do vote by mail.”
Mary Ciccone:
The problem is vote by mail in New Jersey, you have to request that vote by mail ballot by mail one week before the election. And if not, then you have to go in person. Well, if you had had to move out of the state, which a lot of people did because they had no home, they had no power, many people were displaced across the entire state, it wasn’t easy to get back to your County board of elections to get that vote by mail ballot. So there were all kinds of issues and they say displacement of people was one of the biggest problems because they say if your home was destroyed, people evacuated all up and down the shore and they weren’t allowed to return home. So there was no coming home. So they were evacuated and then they were gone, for many months. And when you consider there was election one week later that created all kinds of problems.
Mary Ciccone:
If it had been a month before the election, it wouldn’t have been such a problem, but it literally was one week and they say the opportunity to vote by mail, that was ending when if you wanted to request that vote by mail ballot, by mail, you had to do that one week before the election.
Michelle Bishop:
I’m wondering what are your top three lessons learned from this experience? If you had three main takeaways that you want our audience to remember today to help them prepare wherever they are, what would those be?
Mary Ciccone:
First of all, I think one of the big lessons is it can happen anywhere. You don’t think it can happen to you. I grew up in Ohio and so our biggest fear was always tornadoes. But if you know anything about a tornado, it’s only going to hit a real small area. Even if it’s a really bad tornado, it might wipe out a town, but it’s not going to affect the whole state. But coming out to New Jersey, I’m like, Oh hurricanes, they don’t really hit New Jersey, they hit the South. We don’t really get hurricanes. Well we got hurricanes two years in a row. We got Irene 2011, flooded big chunks of the whole state. And then literally the next year we got Sandy, which devastated the whole state as they say, knocked out power, displaced lots of people throughout the whole state and devastated the shore area.
Mary Ciccone:
So it can happen and it can happen anywhere and you need to be prepared. One, you need to think through what happens if all the power goes out in the state. Voting is dependent on power. You need lights for people to see to go in to vote. Voting machines are electronic equipment, they don’t run on, do they have batteries? Do they have battery backup? They’re not going to operate if there’s no power. And if people are displaced, if something happens where they all have to be evacuated for whatever reason people are not going to be where they’re supposed to be. And if this all happens right around an election, it becomes a major problem. So it’s something that you have to realize that it can happen anywhere and you don’t know when a natural disaster you might hit, but it can and again happen literally anywhere in this country.
Mary Ciccone:
So everybody needs to think in terms of where, what happens if there’s no power and what happens if people are displaced. Because those are the two biggest issues. As I say, most polling places were not destroyed. Most polling places were, the buildings were fine, but they had no power and people moved away or evacuated because they had no power or they were told to evacuate and couldn’t get back home. Those are the issues that remains. So be prepared. I think the other thing is have a good relationship with your division, the person heading the division of elections for the state have a good relationship with all the other partners that we have. Your league of women voters, your ACLU. They may not be as concerned about disability voting, but there everybody has a concern about voting.
Mary Ciccone:
So by having regular meetings, we’re very lucky. We have these regular meetings before every election and in a presidential election year we usually have a couple more to discuss these issues, so we address them before there’s a problem. And the director of the division of elections, I have his address, phone number, he answers me whenever I have a question. So we have a really good working relationship.
Mary Ciccone:
I know other States that may not be the case, but by talking to him regularly he understands now, after I’ve been doing this for however many years I’ve been doing voting and I’ve been dealing with him, he understands accessibility, he understands the need to make sure that people with disabilities have the same access to voting that everybody else does. And if I have an issue, he tries to address it before there’s a problem. So I think having a good relationship with these other partners has really helped. And I say when this happened, he got on the phone and they were very transparent about what they were doing and they wanted our help to get out to our constituents to let people know what was going to happen. So we worked together on that issue.
Mary Ciccone:
Basically those are my two big issues. And three, when emergency does strike throw out any ideas. Some may work, some may not, but when there’s an emergency situation people want to vote. So how are you going to get as many people voting as possible? And I say some of the ideas worked, some of the ideas did not, but people were still trying ideas because it’s something that when push came to shove, everybody in our group had the same goal was to get as many people to vote as possible. So we all worked towards that one purpose and when things didn’t work, we were like, okay. That’s not working. Let’s try something else. But it’s better to work through those ideas beforehand so you can actually think them through, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Mary, I just want to tease out something that you said. Voting depends on power. Not just the electricity but also the electric, the power of the people and I think you drove that home as well as the power of these collective organizations coming together to protect the rights of individuals to vote. And specifically we’re thinking about this in terms of the protection and advocacy agencies who do such stellar work across the country and then the territories is to protect the voting rights of individuals with disabilities. So we sincerely appreciate you bringing that point home here as we prepare to close out. But before we do, we want to ask, is there anything else that you perhaps would like to mention or say that we perhaps didn’t ask you already?
Mary Ciccone:
I remember, just the idea that, Oh my gosh, how are we going to get people to vote when everybody is out of state or out of their district or wherever. And it’s like, what, how are we going to count the votes? How are we going to handle it? I mean, it was just this big fear that the election was going to fall apart and it didn’t. And people did get to vote. But that was because of the collective effort by everybody to make sure that everybody had the right to vote. And I think that’s probably the biggest thing, but it sure would have been nicer if we’d planned for it ahead of time. I think things would have worked a little bit better.
Michelle Bishop:
Mary, I’m sorry it took us eight years to interview you.
Michelle Bishop:
We just got a podcast.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Yes, we’re working on this.
Mary Ciccone:
Yes, I know. It’s going to be a busy year. Thank you.
Michelle Bishop:
That was amazing, Mary. Thank you so much. I think your experience is being caught completely off guard, and having to run an election immediately after a storm, that I don’t think anyone thought was going to reach all the way to New York and New Jersey. That’s got to resonate with a lot of our listeners.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
I think that happens so often. No one thinks it will happen to them until it happens to them. Right? And so making sure that we are prepared as much as possible, but still being fully cognizant that things do not always go as planned. And so having those relationships with people and just being ready to get in there and do the work on the ground, make the connections, identify the problems and figure out very quickly what possible solutions exist can really get us many steps further in the process. And I think that’s a lot of what Mary hit on during our conversation and this is what many advocates have echoed all across the country when it comes to these issues so we’re super excited that she highlighted those for us today.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
And now we have another great conversation.
Michelle Bishop:
We do. This is a great way to shift gears because our next guest is Neal Kelley, who’s with Orange County elections and Orange County actually spends a lot of time preparing and thinking about how they’re going to ensure access to the ballot during or after disaster so that they won’t be caught off guard. Neal, thank you so much for joining us today. Please tell us about you.
Neal Kelley:
Absolutely. Neal Kelley. I’m the Registrar of Voters for the chief elections official for Orange County, California.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Fantastic. And I think Michelle will kick us off with a question or two.
Michelle Bishop:
Absolutely. Neal, how long have you been running elections in Orange County, California?
Neal Kelley:
I am coming up on my 16th year of doing this, which is a little unusual because in California, the average tenure is about five years for this position.
Michelle Bishop:
So a lot of your voters are actually voting by mail. How-
Neal Kelley:
They are. Yes.
Michelle Bishop:
How are they typically receiving an actual postal mail paper ballot? And if so, how do you prepare for disaster when they may not be home or their home may not be there anymore?
Neal Kelley:
Right. So we have a little over a million voters that were voting by mail before this transition to vote centers. Now 1.7 million roughly, voters will all get a paper ballot in the mail. But we’ve also put in new for 2020 a remote vote by mail accessible system. So voters with disabilities or voters that are displaced could easily go online, download their ballot, mark it online, and print it out in any location around the world. So we’re prepared for that. And really, the primary function of that is to provide services for voters with disabilities that might not be able to make it to a vote center, but it has this byproduct of being able to service voters in a disaster or service military voters overseas. So there’s kind of a catchall as well.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
That’s what we refer to as the beauty of universal design. And kind of having program that are not just in terms of physical access, but also programmatic access, communication access, but building things in a way that’s going to be universally accessible to everyone, not just individuals with disabilities. Neal, a quick question for you. Talk to us a little bit about your engagement with the disability community, this is often the first recommendation that we hear when folks talk about making things more accessible and trying to enhance equity for the disability population, so can you talk to me about the process of engaging with the disability community to make some of these changes that you’ve referenced this far?
Neal Kelley:
I can’t tell you enough how much I appreciate the disability community here in orange County because they’re engaged and we have a number of representatives on our large community advisory board, which is made up of 25 individuals throughout the County. Many of them voters with disabilities, and I can tell you that they have been instrumental in the acquisition of our new voting system in the way that we are providing services to voters with disabilities. And just a quick example. For instance, we have a subcommittee of that group that really educated us on open captions and how we’re doing video education and using open captions versus closed captioning. So they’ve just been instrumental in the whole operation. From top to bottom.
Michelle Bishop:
You talked a little bit about how you prepare for a disaster when you’re thinking about running elections, what sort of partners are you bringing to the table? Even just beyond the disability community.
Neal Kelley:
We a have a law enforcement fusion center here in Orange County that we work very closely with. We partner very closely with Homeland Security and the FBI. We also partner with our local fire authority. And so all of these folks are at the table and having these discussions on how would we respond. We participate in tabletop exercises for instance, with our local fire authority and local law enforcement and that keeps this issue top of mind. We also go through risk assessments internally and then bring in these other outside agencies as necessary to help us with those risk assessments and to provide other perspectives. So it’s kind of broad in terms of what we do here in Orange County and the people that we engage. I’m also fortunate because Orange County is the only County in California that has its own law enforcement fusion center for the entire County. Even LA County doesn’t have that. So, I’m lucky that we have these resources available.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Neal, I also wanted to ask you a question here. If you could, you said that you had been doing a lot of planning and things that have been specifically related to preparation for 2020 elections, started here in March. Let’s just dream here a bit. What would you envision the voting process looking like in the next four or so years? You’ve already been doing the work for 16 years. I totally imagine you’re doing it for another 16 you seem to love it, but I wonder, if you could project out for the next four years or so, what would you envision by way of advancements and if you could kind of build a better process as you go, even if the technology doesn’t have space for it now, but perhaps we could just project out and dream for the future. What would that look like for you?
Neal Kelley:
This is really a sea change for Orange County voters for what we’re going through now in this transition, and to me election administrators for so long have been in a bubble and focused mainly on the process of administration and not the voter experience. And I’m trying to take this to a different level to be able to provide a very different valuable experience for voters where there’s more access, there’s more time, it’s an easier process with less barriers and that’s what I’m focused on with this transition we’re making now.
Neal Kelley:
All I can see between now and the next four years is this ability with increased access and ease of use in the system. And I think we’re headed in the right direction. I’m not sure how much your listeners might be familiar with the voting system guidelines and that process of enhancing development of new systems, and I’m very involved in that process, so I see new technology the next four or five, six years coming down the road that can make it even more accessible for voters. So we’ll continue to look at that and we’ll continue to implement those things here in Orange County. There’s no question.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
A point of clarification, Neal, am I hearing you say that you would like for us to have more accessible means of voting by a hoverboard? Is that where we’re going for the next 10 years or so Neal? That’s just to speak kind of clear for the listeners here, no, I’m joking.
Neal Kelley:
Yes, of course. I mean that’s a great comment. I think the thing that I just wanted to add though is that, this is a probably a horrible analogy, but I think of the Starbucks of voting in that it has to be an easy process that is not a burden or a hassle. And I think there’ve been so many laws and so many regulations that have surrounded elections that creates those barriers, unintended in many cases. But we don’t think about the voters enough and that’s what I’m trying to do and make those changes.
Michelle Bishop:
I need them to get my name right on the Starbucks. But other than that, yes. Absolutely. And I agree. I think there’s so much technology on the horizon right now that’s going to change so much about how we access the vote in general, and I can’t imagine how invaluable some of that’s going to be when we think about elections under less than ideal circumstances. So that’s fascinating.
Neal Kelley:
Yes. And one thing I think we need to keep in mind is that the more that we enhance security, the more potential there is for decreasing access, and then those unintended consequences. So certainly we need to keep that in mind.
Michelle Bishop:
Absolutely. The voter experience for sure. And voters are diverse.
Neal Kelley:
I would encourage if there’s other election officials listening or just people in other jurisdictions is that focus on that disaster recovery plan. Take the time to sit down and think about the risks that you face and how would you deploy following a natural disaster or even an unnatural disaster because we have an obligation to the voters to make sure that there’s accessibility across the board. So even though there’s limited resources, you can sit down and take the time to go through those risk assessments, and that’s important.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Ladies, any additional questions for Neal?
Michelle Bishop
The only thing I could add to what Neal’s just said is that I think that any elections officials who are listening are much more powerful than they’ve ever imagined. Elections officials make such important decisions and they set the tone and voting system, manufacturers and vendors, they design what they can sell to you and if you are innovators and you push change then we’re going to see better and better solutions for security and accessibility and flexibility going into the future. So yes, absolutely.
Erika Hudson:
Maybe even hover boards.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Very important, very important.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Neal, It has been an absolute pleasure and this has been a wonderful, wonderful interview. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Neal Kelley:
Awesome. Thanks so much.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
Wonderful. But ladies, I do have news. We are already at the end of our very first episode of the PandA Pod. We want to thank you all so much for taking this journey with us and we do hope that you will continue on. We have so much other wonderful content in the store.
Michelle Bishop:
We crushed it today though.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
We have much, much more to share. So we hope that you will join us. I once again am Justice Shorter, Disaster Protection Advisor here at NDRN.
Michelle Bishop:
Michelle Bishop, Voting Rights Specialist at NDRN.
Erika Hudson:
Erika Hudson, Public Policy Analyst with NDRN.
Michelle Bishop:
Specialist in the big ‘C’ census.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
That’s the next one. And that’s our very next episode. Erika, tell us a little bit about the next episode. What’s coming up next year?
Erika Hudson:
Like you said, the big ‘C’ census 2020 is fast approaching. It’s a big year, not only with elections, but with the census that only happens every 10 years. So on our next episode, we’ll be talking about how census data impacts disaster and emergency preparedness and what it all is about.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
And the funding attached to it.
Erika Hudson:
They’re funding lot of money going in there. So hello, that’s what I’m saying.
Erika Hudson:
Thank you all for tuning into our first episode of the PandA Pod in our first series of Disaster, Disability & Democracy.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
It’s been a pleasure guys. Have a good one.
Michelle Bishop:
Hear you next week.
Justine “Justice” Shorter:
We’re out, Bye.
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