This general election will see more new MPs elected than at any time since the Second World War. Labour and Tories alike will lose a number of MPs from “safe” seats. This campaign is already being billed by the media as one of the closest races in recent times, with public confidence in politicians at an all-time low following the MPs’ expenses scandal.
With the opinion polls showing Labour and the Conservatives on an almost equal footing amid the Liberal Democrats’ surge, every candidate will need to fight harder than ever to win their seat.
What is clear is that a “business as usual” approach to election campaigning is outdated and a new strategy is necessary. This will inevitably involve seeking out new voters. As the chief executive of Sense, the national deafblind charity, I am keenly aware of a vast number of potential voters who have not voted, not through lack of desire, but through lack of access. This untapped resource of new voters may well hold the key to many candidates’ election success.
One in six people in this country, representing an average of 15,000 voters per constituency, has a disability. This is more than enough to have a major impact on the election, yet until now voters with a disability have been by and large ignored.
Labour’s groundbreaking Equality Bill is set to improve the lives of disabled people, yet, in terms of elections, there is much further to go. At the 2005 general election, 68 per cent of polling stations had one or more serious access barriers that prevented many disabled people from voting.
Making an election campaign accessible can seem a daunting and expensive task. In reality, this does not need to be the case. Minor changes that are low cost can really make the difference when targeting disabled voters. Sense, with the support of Scope, is running training sessions for politicians across the country to help with how this can be done.
While no two disabled people are the same, four main areas can make all the difference when targeting disabled voters: providing accessible information about candidates; meeting disabled people on the campaign trail; the voting process itself and the issues affecting disabled voters.
Examples of how to be more accessible include: printing leaflets on matt paper (never on gloss), which is both cost-effective and often more environmentally friendly, as well as using well-lit venues with wheelchair access and a hearing induction loop.
For the election itself, returning officers should be made aware of how they can help to improve the voting process. Our booklets and training sessions provide much more information.
But it mustn’t end at the polling booths. Once the practical difficulties are overcome, all the political parties need to be aware of the issues facing disabled people in everyday life that will arise as they campaign. The income of disabled people is, on average, less than half that of non-disabled people. Twenty-nine per cent of families with a disabled child live in poverty, one in four have experienced disabled hate crime or harassment and 60 per cent of disabled people are unable to access community activities.
These are startling facts, yet this is the reality for many disabled people and their families. Simply having an awareness of this will inevitably enrich candidates’ experience of interacting with disabled voters. After all, the most important attribute a candidate can have to get elected is “listening” in every conceivable way to all their voters.
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Sense has produced a booklet to help candidates be more accessible to disabled voters. At the training sessions, information is given on issues that resonate with disabled voters. Candidates can contact Kari Gerstheimer, Sense’s policy and parliamentary officer, for more detailed information on kari.gerstheimer@sense.org.uk, telephone 07825 174 930
