In Harris County, Texas, only 2 out of 701 polling locations were fully ADA-compliant, and 300 could not be fixed even with temporary modifications

An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that of 701 voting locations in Harris County, Texas—the third most populous county in the nation, home to 4.7 million people—just two were fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Three hundred of those 701 sites were not only noncompliant but could not be made accessible even through temporary modifications like portable ramps or signage. Of the 68 early voting sites, not a single one was fully compliant. This is not a Harris County anomaly: a GAO study of 178 polling places nationwide found that 60% had potential barriers to entry and 65% had problems with voting apparatus accessibility for wheelchair users. In Detroit and 14 surrounding suburbs, 84% of voting locations had barriers for voters with disabilities. The downstream impact is that voters with disabilities simply do not vote. The U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey consistently shows a turnout gap of 6-7 percentage points between voters with and without disabilities. That gap represents millions of citizens. For a wheelchair user who arrives at their assigned polling place and finds three steps with no ramp, the options are: attempt to find the curbside voting setup (if one exists and if a poll worker is stationed outside), travel to a different location that may or may not be accessible, or give up. Many give up. This is not a hypothetical—it is a pattern documented in DOJ enforcement actions, GAO audits, and disability rights litigation across dozens of jurisdictions. The structural reason this persists is that polling places are typically hosted in buildings the county does not own—churches, community centers, schools, VFW halls—and the county has no authority or budget to renovate them. When an election official surveys sites, they are choosing from whatever buildings are available in each precinct, and in many precincts there is no fully accessible option. The ADA requires "program access," meaning the county must make the voting program accessible, but the enforcement mechanism is reactive: the DOJ investigates after a complaint is filed, not proactively. Counties that lack staff to conduct accessibility audits—which is most of them—do not know how bad their compliance is until someone sues.