Avoiding stigma and discrimination when providing inclusion, accessibility and support: the case of the right to vote of people with disabilities

This paper uses the critical diagnosis of access to the right to vote of people with disabilities (PD) and the recommendations that can be found to solve the problems that affect them, to analyse the tensions in the access of people with mental disabilities to citizenship. The electoral exclusion and the difficulties that the PD experience in practice when voting invite to think in terms of accessibility and support, on the one hand, and in changing eligibility rules, on the other. However, the concrete ways in which these policies materialize can generate new problems for PD in their relation to the political process. We must avoid the emergence of new problems through a better and more informed electoral regulation, but also we must realize the difficulties that inclusive measures, accessibility and support can generate for PD if these measures are not considered as part of transformative solutions that seek to eliminate varied and profound forms of discrimination and stigma.