According to the Center for Disease Control, one in four American adults has a disability. The disability community is likely severely underrepresented in public office, but due to an absence of solid quantitative data, we don’t have any reliable facts or figures on the number of people with disabilities serving in office at the Federal, state, or local level at any point in time. To bring attention to disability representation in office, NCIL launched its Database of Candidates with Disabilities to track candidates for elected office who identify as having a disability running in 2018 and beyond. It is also necessary to track current elected officials who identify as having a disability so we can begin to build a more complete picture of representation of people with disabilities in public office. By tracking this data, we hope to not only make elected officials with disabilities more visible to constituents and fellow citizens with disabilities, but also to encourage research institutions to develop methods to measure disability representation in office quantitatively.
- You can access the database of current elected officials with disabilities in Excel. Please note that elected officials are separated into three tabs based on whether they serve at the national, state, or local level.