Enabling Disabled Citizens to Vote

Tony Meza has never voted. In his family, casting a ballot was always his father’s job. But the patriarch is now suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and he recently turned over to his son the duty of voting.

“He told me, ‘I want you to do this, it’s your responsibility now. It’s your turn,’ ” said Meza, a Lake Forest resident who is developmentally disabled.

Meza, 51, took a step Tuesday toward becoming a voter. He attended the first Orange County registration rally held by Unique People, a Los Angeles-based voter registration project for the disabled.

About 20 students at Saddleback Community Enterprises in Mission Viejo, a job training center for the developmentally disabled, filled out voter registration forms and held a mock presidential election.

The students also heard Unique People organizer Sean Casey O’Brien talk about power in numbers.

“Do you know how many disabled voters there are in California? About 2.5 million,” he said, drawing murmurs of astonishment from the students.

“Disabled citizens are the largest minority voting bloc in the nation,” O’Brien said. “Voting is the best way to protect your rights.”

O’Brien founded Unique People in 1993. The organization now has about 2,000 who are fanning out to register disabled citizens to vote in the Nov. 5 election, he said.

Catherine Fender, a Saddleback Community Enterprises job training specialist, said she has heard many people express surprise when they learn that developmentally disabled citizens are also voters.

“Just because this society doesn’t think they’re smart enough to vote, it doesn’t mean that they can’t,” she said.