Parents' Corner
Complaining Empowered Voters: Become One Today!
Robin Hurd
Someone once said, “If you didn’t vote, don’t complain.” I say, “If you didn’t complain, you won’t know how to vote.” Part of becoming an informed voter is to make sure you know what your most important concerns are. Some folks would call that complaining, and maybe it is if you stop there. But “complaining” can be a great first step toward begin part of the solution to problems that frustrate us. I see three steps to becoming an informed voter. 1.) complain: List what directly effects your family that needs to be changed. 2.) choose your target: Decide what group or segment of government can make that change and 3.) make informed choices: Research options, communicate your needs clearly to the candidates and vote accordingly.
Complain:
Start by listing things that directly affect your family that need to be changed. It might be a public school issue. It might be accessibility in your local area. It might be the need to have an MR label before getting services for your child. It might be concern over exclusive provider agreements made by insurance companies with manufacturers of durable medical equipment. It might be that medical treatments related to autism or depression, because they are considered a mental health disability, are not covered by your medical insurance at the same rate as for other diagnoses. Or, it might be that parents are the ones who must work to make sure that schools are compliant with IDEA law.
Whatever the things are that aggravate you should make it on this list. Getting specific about the things that need to be changed will help you to educate others, to look for candidates who have ideas to fix these problems, and also to decide where the best place to put your efforts toward change might be.
Choose your target:
In step two, take the list of things you wish were different and identify what organization or part of government can best address the problem. If there are issues with your public school, for example, paying attention to the school board elections and communicating with the candidates may be a critical step to solving the issues. If there are local accessibility issues, you may decide that the best way to address them is by speaking with the advocacy groups in your area to find out what they are doing and how you can help. Other concerns such as those about healthcare may be ones that you will look directly to state or federal government officials to find out more. Different people may see the same problem, but choose a different target for it. This will be affected by your overall philosophy of what government should do and what government should stay out of. I may choose to work with the local ADAPT organization to see changes in accessibility, and another parent might choose to target county government officials. That’s OK. Our attention to a problem we know from experience will help to change it.
Make informed choices:
Once you have a pretty good idea of which public offices to look at on which of the issues that matter to you, do your research. Find out everything you can about the various candidates. Are they aware of the problems that concern you? What do they plan to do to make the problems better? As you may have noticed from the letters that flood your mailbox this time of year, your elected officials want to put the best face on whatever they have done in the past. Dig deeper. If they say they have supported healthcare reform bills, check it out. Did they include the kind of changes you think would make the system better? Their brand of healthcare reform may have included the very changes that frustrate you now. Also look at where the decision making power rests within their reforms. Too often, those who have the most power to decide what’s “best” for our kids are the people who rarely, if ever, see them. If this is an important concern of yours, look into it specifically.
Once you know what your biggest concerns are and have done your research into the various candidates in the local, state and national elections, gather it all together in one place. Organizing what you found out takes a little time, but it helps you to figure out how to vote in the “little” races that may have a big impact on your family. You may also want to share your information with family and friends. (Use your judgment here. You still want to be on good terms after the elections!)
My husband often will take a piece of paper into the voting booth with him that contains a list of the candidates and their stands on things that matter to him. That way, he isn’t relying on his memory to help him keep track of which of the school board members he wanted to vote for (or be sure NOT to vote for) or which county official has supported steps to make the downtown more accessible to wheelchairs. There is no reason why you can’t do this, if it helps you to vote more wisely.
Though the process I described to become an informed voter began with complaining, it quickly moves from “what’s wrong” to “how can we fix it”. As we move from our complaints to how to fix the problem, we become not only informed but empowered. We have discovered little and big ways to cause change. Our ideas about how to make things better and our passion to see it happen will help us to make a positive difference—during this election cycle and beyond.
Note: AAC Institute does not support any candidate. We encourage informed voting on the issues that impact people with disabilities and advocate for bipartisan collaboration to find solutions that will improve the quality of life of people with disabilities and their families.
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