Your call for accessible voting is delivered to Downing Street

RNIB staff and volunteers, including Chair Anna Tylor, went to Downing Street this week to hand in an open letter signed by 2,443 of you, calling on the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to finally make accessible voting a reality for people with sight loss.

2,443 of you signed the open letter in the run up to polling day. Throughout the 2024 election campaign, your support was fantastic. You spoke up about the injustice of inaccessible voting, bringing this issue to elections officials, decision makers and members of the public.

On top of the open letter, nearly 900 of you shared your voting experience with us after polling day via the Turned Out survey. This gives RNIB valuable evidence to demonstrate the scale of the challenges posed by our current voting system.

You watched and shared our #BlindVotersCount campaign film, which highlighted just how unfair and frustrating the lack of a secret vote is. In addition, campaigners, and content creators with sight loss, including Lucy Edwards, shared their experiences of voting across social media, and urged their followers to sign our open letter. They were featured on ITV, BBC News and in the Guardian coverage of the election, reaching millions of people.

You can read more about why voting in secret remains impossible for many people with sight loss here and read our open letter to the Prime Minister below.

Open letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer

The letter reads:

Dear Prime Minister,

Voting is a fundamental right and part of living in democratic society. More than 150 years after the right to a secret vote was made law, blind and partially sighted people are still having to share their vote. This is a scandal.

In the UK we vote by reading and marking a piece of paper. This is an impossible task for those who cannot see the ballot paper. It means most blind people have to share their vote, either with a family member, a friend or polling station staff. Voters report feeling humiliated and let down by the system, having to share their vote out loud in public, feeling judged, and in some cases not even being certain who they voted for.

In 2019 a judge called the provisions available to enable blind people to vote “a parody of the electoral process”. Later that year, our survey of voting experiences in the General Election found just 13 per cent of blind voters, and less than half of partially sighted voters (44 per cent), felt they could vote independently and in secret under the current voting system. Since then, the law has changed, but the adaptations routinely available to blind voters in the polling station remain largely the same.

There are tried and tested ways blind and partially sighted people can truly vote independently and in secret. In Australia, blind and partially sighted people can register to vote by telephone. In a recent UK trial, audio and tactile accessible voting solutions enabled 93 per cent of participants to vote independently and in secret. These audio and tactile solutions could be requested and used to vote at this year’s General Election on Thursday 4 July, but crucially, were not available in every polling station.

A blind or partially sighted person should be able to turn up to their polling station on the day and be able to vote independently, without having to make requests themselves in advance, just like anyone else.

Let’s make this the last election where blind people have to share their vote. The solutions are out there. Let's make this a reality.

Letter ends.

How you can continue to support the campaign

In this new Parliament, asking your MP to sign up as an RNIB Champion is a great way to let them know what issues you are interested in and how they can support their blind or partially sighted constituents. Complete our short webform to write to your MP.