Posted on 09/15/2004 9:19:15 AM PDT by foolscap
Florida neurologist Marc Swerdloff was taken aback when one of his patients with advanced dementia voted in the 2000 presidential election. The man thought it was 1942 and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The patient's wife revealed that she had escorted her husband into the booth.
"I said 'Did he pick?' and she said 'No, I picked for him,' " Swerdloff said. "I felt bad. She essentially voted twice" in the Florida election, which gave George W. Bush a 537-vote victory and the White House.
As swing states with large elderly populations such as Florida gear up for another presidential election, a sleeper issue has been gaining attention on medical, legal and political radar screens: Many people with advanced dementia appear to be voting in elections -- including through absentee ballot. Although there are no national statistics, two studies in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island found that patients at dementia clinics turned out in higher numbers than the general population.
About 4.5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia. Florida alone has 455,000 patients, advocates estimate.
Concern is growing that people with dementia may be targets for partisan exploitation in nursing homes and other facilities. Even without abuse, family members and caregivers may unduly influence close elections.
"Precisely because Alzheimer's disease insidiously erodes the ability to make reasoned judgments . . . it is somewhat unnerving to consider that patients with dementia may routinely contribute to selecting the leader of the free world," Victor W. Henderson and David A. Drachman wrote after the 2000 election in the journal Neurology.
Many people with mild dementia are able to understand the issues in an election, but experts say there is no way to test voter competence...
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
"In California, for example, Democrats are suing the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Menlo Park for preventing activists from talking to residents and homeless veterans. Lawyer Scott Rafferty, a member of presidential candidate John F. Kerry's steering committee, said he was turned away on the grounds that residents have dementia.
Rafferty said that most of the residents were of sound mind -- and that most were Democrats. He charged the Bush administration with suppressing Democratic turnout."
No, they should not vote. Indeed, the DNC should be disbanded.
This isn't 1942?
"Rafferty said that most of the residents were of sound mind -- and that most were Democrats"
Oxymoron.
My dad, who's 90, is suffering from somewhat severe dementia. He has no business voting.
Why not? One of them is even running for the top office.
Well, hell NO they shouldn't be voting. Duh.
Right. If dementia sufferers weren't allowed to vote, Kerry would get zero electoral votes.
My mother lives with me and she has dementia. Is she voting this year! HELL YEA. I know who my Mother would vote for and I can't wait to get that absentee ballot and SIGN HER NAME on it.
My mother has advanced Alzheimers and is a registered voter. Should she not vote when the patients in nursing homes have their voter registrations used by others to cast votes?
I've been contemplating letting her vote and if it's challenged, I would challenge all votes from the nursing homes. I know what's going on there.
In this small Democrat-controlled town most people know my mother's condition and know we're Republicans.
"Should dementia sufferers be allowed to vote?"
Of course Democrats shouldn't be allowed to vote.
People with dementia or other severe mental disabilities should not be aloud to vote
They aren't able to make decisions for themselves, why would we allow them to make a decision such as voting?
"Right. If dementia sufferers weren't allowed to vote, Kerry would get zero electoral votes"
No. In states populated largely by felons and dead people, Kerry would still win.
For example, Illinois.
Could be a really interesting conversation to have.
If we're going to insist upon some standards before being able to vote where will we stop? And can we include the following restrictions?
Enough english fluency that ballots don't need to be printed in foreign languages?
Enough concept of our government that they could say name the 3 branches, etc?
I might also include some requirements about proof of citizenship.
What I am about to post is not a joke:
People whom society classifies as mentally impaired should be allowed to vote.
So long as someone can find his way to the voting booth and manage to perform whatever physical movements are needed to cast his vote, that person should be allowed to vote.
The reason for this is that such voters are needed to counterbalance the votes of those people our society classifies as mentally gifted.
And I am serious about this.
If the person is a citizen and alert enough to want to vote then why not. Standing on the platform at the the top but not actually both feet on the slippery slope itself.
You make a good point. As long as they do it unassisted, I'm with you.
This reminds of a group home for the mentally ill where I had some business to tend to back in November 2000. There was about 25 of the residents in the cafeteria sporting "I Voted" stickers on their shirts. All but maybe 5 of them were also wearing Gore/Lieberman buttons. Just damn.
Sure-why not? I mean, if they can run for president...
Vote? Heck, should they be allowed to become JOURNALISTS??!!
Of course there is!
There must be at least 100 very basic questons about our country, our system of government and current critical issues that a bright 12 year old could answer.
The neocoms, the clueless, the voluntarily unemployed insist that a "right" like voting is the end in itself, rather than a means to engage the aware citizen.
It is "democracy's" dirty secret: Allowing the incompetent to vote is antithecal to a Republic and may eventual be the major cause of its downfall.
Even a Frenchman, Alexis de Toqueville, could see it in the 1830s...
...and dementia?
Well, unintentionally, this doofus got it right. For the neocoms, dementia qualifies as "sound" (normal democratic) mind.
"I mean, if they can run for president..."
Actually, that goes to my above post.
Lurch is, quite obviously, a zombie. That is, an animated dead person either made from leftovers or a corpse reanimated by some nefarious chemical or ju ju.
Doesn't the Consitution say "living for 35 years?" How long has Lurch been dead? Does he still qualify?
And what happens if he tries to eat the brain of some foreign dignatory? Does the Secret Service let him?!
Should schizophrenics be allowed to vote once for each personality?
If the dead can vote and in some states dogs can vote why not the demented?
I think we all agree that anyone who can't understand a simple butterfly ballot probably shouldn't be voting. But while it makes sense for individual states to make voting contingent upon some literacy of mental competency test, you create an avenue for abuse. Eventually your right to vote will become subject to the attitudes and whims of the test makers and graders.
Observe how the "humane" attitude to crime could operate. If crimes are diseases, why should diseases be treated differently from crimes? And who but experts can define disease? One school of pathology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory "cure"? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, "What have I done to deserve this?' The Straightener will reply: "But, my dear fellow, no one's blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We're healing you." --C. S. Lewis
Demented people vote all the time. They vote for Democrats and Republicans under the demented belief that government can solve societal problems.
How would he know to get to the polls? Who would take him? Or "help" him vote? That's the problem.
no, of course not, they shouldnt vote....they would all vote demoncrat....
The Capt.
Dan Rather said it was 2004, so you might be right.
"Allowing the incompetent to vote is antithecal to a Republic and may eventual be the major cause of its downfall."
Amen to that! I can remember seeing some of the segments of the "man on the street" that Jay Leno does where he shows pictures of various famous political figurers to "ordinary" people, and I couldn't believe the number of persons who had no idea who the VP is or even who Bush is. I mean that's scary and we think these people should vote?? Granted most of them would probably not be if left to their own devices, but with someone leading them by the hand into the voting booth is certainly a scenario that sends shivers down my spine.
"Another person, who had been diagnosed with acute multiple personality disorder, was granted one vote per personality. In the end, the individual voted for Kerry 18 times, Nader 11 times and wrote in votes for Janeane Garafalo, John Fogerty, Don Imus and a 26-year-old part-time comp. professor at the University of Toledo. < \ sarcasm >
I don't mind them voting, but I don't think they should be able to RUN!
Several comments on this entire discussion. In the 1820/30 period...it was quiet likely on election day for over half the men in America to be completely drunk or wasted...free alcohol ran like streams, and no one probably remembed who they voted for or why. This tradidion with election drinking was commonplace until the 1920s and the prohibition period.
Nothin ever was written into the constituion to forbid crazy people from voting...nor declare that inmates of prisons couldn't vote...or that people without property could vote (yes, there were state rules...but that was driven by state perceptions).
I personally, have a big problem in allowing voting to branch out with the mentally disturbed crowd. But this leads to the question...who will declare that Aunt Matty is a certified nut and can't vote? A republican doctor? A democratic appointee by the county office?
America is based on freedoms...even for the nutty folks...and as long as they only number up to one percent of the population...I don't see a urgent rush to fix this problem. When 10 percent of the population is nuts...then we gotta do something. But I'd be fixing more than just the voting problem...I'd have the 10 percent group in a facility.
No, this is 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. No, wait a minute, that's 1493, when Columbus sailed the deep blue sea. No, sorry, I'm confused. Have I missed the primaries?
You wrote:
"Right. If dementia sufferers weren't allowed to vote, Kerry would get zero electoral votes."
You forgot felons, dead people, and Hillary.
Oh, I'm sorry. _Electoral_ votes. Maybe. :-)
Certain mental illnesses and an inability to read the ballot should both disqualify the voter.
What about the person who is, say... wheel-chair bound.
I have a good friend with perfectly good common sense. Her husband is a veteran of the Navy.
Sadly, she needs some help getting around, because hse also has MS, and is sometimes in a wheel-chair.
How about alcoholics, druggies, and women on prozac.
When people get to the point where they are no longer even aware that elections are occurring, they are not going to be voting on their own. This would take care of the problem if other people weren't voting for them. Obviously, if there is someone who decides when a person is too demented to vote, this power is subject to abuse.
Taking the vote of a person with dementia should be made a felony if it is not already. Publicizing the penalties for violation might help.
Which is exactly why nothing will change.
It does bother me that we have people "voting" for these folks with dementia, but practically, I don't think there's much to be done about it.
Pretty much.
It gets way too "Third Reich" to start making distinctions based on mental, physical capability!
I have no problem with retirees voting, but I beleive that any preson who receives public assistance has demonstrated an inability to handle their own affairs and should therefore be barred from having a voice in government affairs. Period.
That's oK too.
So long as they have a way of making their choice known.
Seeing Florida in the first line reminded me...................
All who know Delray Florida politics probably know the name so I won't mention him here but will say that his getting the folks out of "rest/nursing homes' etc at election times gets the dems MANY votes there all the time......
Isn't being a democrat one of the first signs of dementia?
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