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The Right to Vote: Filipinos with Disabilities and the 2013 Elections chronicles the journey of government and civil society to make the 2013 elections disability-inclusive.
Produced by the media nonprofit VERA Files, the 173-page book examines the gains and setbacks of the Commission on Elections and its Inter-Agency and NGO Network on the Empowerment of PWDs and of civil society’s Fully Abled Nation campaign to enable persons with disabilities to enjoy fully their right to suffrage.
Fully Abled Nation was launched under the Increasing Participation of PWDs in the 2013 Midterm Elections program of The Asia Foundation and the Australian government.
The Right to Vote recounts in text and photos the experience of PWDs in the 2012 special voters registration for PWDs and in the May 13, 2013 midterm elections. In the end, the Comelec designated only two of the country’s nearly 37,000 polling precincts as accessible polling places in what it calls its pilot areas.
The book also takes readers back to another Comelec experiment, this time during the barangay or village elections held on Oct. 28 that year, which turned four malls into accessible polling places.
In all three exercises, accessibility remained a major problem for PWDs. The Right to Vote details how disability advocates stepped in to help fill the void and, more important, how PWDs themselves broke down barriers to their right to vote.
The Right to Vote is published by The Asia Foundation with support from the Australian government. The book’s main writers are Artha Kira Paredes, Lala Ordenes, Avigail Olarte and Maribel Buenaobra. It is co-edited by Luz Rimban and Yvonne T. Chua.
PUBLISHED: 2014 [/three_fourth_last]