Volunteers will also survey polling stations throughout the country and, with more than 8.6 million disabled people entitled to vote, the groups will gauge how easy or difficult it is for them. Access to some polling booths has represented a problem for people with disabilities in the past. However, Scope said changes had been enforced since 1997 to improve access and reduce areas of difficulty. Michelle Hegarty, Capability Scotland Poor access to polling stations has, in the past, been compounded by especially high or narrow booths, which have made it impossible to cast a vote in private. The organisations will collate the results before submitting a report with recommendations.
Voting is a basic right.
There are about 13,000 disabled people in each constituency. When they are denied equal access to polling stations, disabled people are being squeezed from democracy. And CS director of communications, Michelle Hegarty, said officials must wake up to the reality of the problems people with disabilities have faced with when casting their vote. Yet this is the reality for thousands of Scotland's voters who have a disability. This is something that CS is anxious to remedy before the next Scottish parliamentary elections in 2003.