Causes of Enfranchisement of People with Intellectual Disabilities

• In Event: Paths to Political Representation of People with Disabilities

Abstract

I aim to explain the causes of electoral reform leveraging a difference-in-differences design on the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I analyze repeated cross-sectional cross-country data recovered from national constitutional courts and national legislatures of failed and successful amendments on electoral laws that (dis)enfranchise people with intellectual disabilities. The data set will comprise amendments on the electoral law of each respective state, identified through searches in parliamentary and national constitutional court documentation systems. I will search the documentations for other types of amendments that would enlarge or shrink the size of the eligible voters such as prisoners voting, people with dementia or in psychological clinics voting, non-citizen voting, women and people of color voting, and voting age reduction. Thereby I control for the general propensity of eligible votership enlargement to be discussed.

Author

• Moritz Raykowski, Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies/ University of Cologne