Glenn Votes (or, access to the polls, 1940-style)

[Image description--a black-and-white news photo shows a man carrying another man across wooden planks leaving a building, with signs indicating that it's a polling location.]

This image is from Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990, an online exhibit of Los Angeles Times photos, hosted by UCLA Libraries. I've drawn from this archive before, but this photo in contrast (or comparison) to so many photos from the polls this last week caught my attention anew. Glenn Switzer, the man being carried above, was a veteran disabled in World War I. To vote in Duarte, California, in 1940, he had to be carried by another man, Walter Howard. The ground looks muddy; those wooden planks are a makeshift sidewalk for pedestrian voters, but they're insufficient for Switzer's independent access, and they probably kept a lot of other folks from even trying to vote that November.

Amy Votes

[Image description: woman with grey hair, long skirt, and walker, smiling over her shoulder, on a ramp near a sign that says "Vote Here"]

From the New York Times Polling Place Photo Project--this is Amy Pitt, voting (with a broken ankle) today in Rochester NY. Amy Pitt is (or was, in 2004) active with Metro Justice of Rochester, "an independent, grassroots, progressive membership organization, seeking a peaceful and just society....[working] for human rights, total equality, and economic and environmental justice by raising community awareness and engaging in non-violent direct action."

More accessibility-related images in the project (so far, I'll keep adding links as I find more): "Stairway to Democracy" by Brian Scott (San Francisco CA); "Handicap Access" by Kirk Bravender (Chicago IL); "QH Sign" by Anonymous (Jacksonville FL); "Privacy" by Daniel Goscha (Urbana IL); "Vote Here!" by Anonymous (Minneapolis MN); "Other Arrangements" by Eric Talerico (Sierra Vista AZ); "Primary Distortion" by Marcus C. Emerson (San Diego CA); "A Chance for All" by Anonymous (Knoxville TN); "South Philadelphia" by Anonymous (2006 Midterms, Philadelphia PA); "Birmingham, Alabama" by Louise McPhillips; "Easy Access" by Nancy Wynn (Glastonbury CT); "Access to the Hawaiian Democratic Caucus" by Bruce Behnke (Pearl City HI).

[last updated 20 February 2008]