📋 Nursing Home Residents Struggle to Vote in Elections (AARP Article)

[Spring2025]

FROM THE ARTICLE - SEE ARTICLE FOR MORE!!!

Nursing Home Residents Could Tip Elections, if They Find a Way to Vote.

For 2 million people in long-term care, ballot barriers are common.

By Maura Kelly Lannan, AARP. Published October 18, 2024.

Six weeks before the 2022 primaries, Maurice Miller hadn’t received his mail-in ballot from administrators at his Maryland nursing home. Each time he asked if they’d submitted a ballot application for him, he says he was told not to worry — there was a pandemic-related extension.

By the time the retired journalist and IT administrator realized the ballot wasn’t coming and there was no extension, the only voting option was to get to the polls on Election Day. Miller, now 61, who is a functional quadriplegic with some use of his arms, was told to arrange his own transportation.

After contacting several Maryland agencies, Miller made it to the polls and voted, but then spent the night in the hospital for observation after his wheelchair tipped over inside the van that transported him.

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-2024/nursing-home-voters.html

[GailL1]

From the linked AARP article: [copy/paste]

Federal law safeguards the rights of nursing home residents to vote, but some have questioned whether they should. Such residents have just as much of a right to cast a ballot as those living elsewhere, says Richard Mollot, executive director of Long Term Care Community Coalition. 

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I think he is missing the point here - We have people living in Nursing homes and other institutional facilities who have been adjusdicated and assigned a Guardian to look after their affairs - all of them - personal, financial, legal and health wise - Nowof course, this could be due to physical or mental incapacities or maybe some of both.

So who decides ?  Who decides who can get a ballot, who decides who will be able to vote for them logistically if they can’t.  It certainly cannot be just one person for the whole facility - but who?  This person has to be assigned this duty by the voter and documented this way on the ballot.  At least in my state.  

In my county, the Registrars office drops off the mail in ballots to these facilities but they have to trust that th people getting the ballot do not have some condition that prevents them from acting of their own accord.  Who decides that if they already have an incapacitated adjudication. 

Then who collect the ballots and drops them at the appropriate location?  It should be the same one that fills out the ballot for the person or a designated person if it is only for ballot drop off.  

So who is mentally functional and who is not in this institutional environment? Who decides?

A family member may be the appointee but that still leaves many that don’t have family close by.  

I think all of these physical barriers could easily be overcome. Those are just logistics - what’s more important is who has the mental capacity to vote if they have already been announced to be incapacitated by the courts?  Who verifies?

[Spring2025]

[10/21/24] Gail @GailL1 , excellent points. I will add that they should be able to vote without having to travel. Take care, Nicole

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[*** GAIL wrote: From the linked AARP article: [copy/paste]

Federal law safeguards the rights of nursing home residents to vote, but some have questioned whether they should. Such residents have just as much of a right to cast a ballot as those living elsewhere, says Richard Mollot, executive director of Long Term Care Community Coalition. 

==========================

I think he is missing the point here - We have people living in Nursing homes and other institutional facilities who have been adjusdicated and assigned a Guardian to look after their affairs - all of them - personal, financial, legal and health wise - Nowof course, this could be due to physical or mental incapacities or maybe some of both.

So who decides ?  Who decides who can get a ballot, who decides who will be able to vote for them logistically if they can’t.  It certainly cannot be just one person for the whole facility - but who?  This person has to be assigned this duty by the voter and documented this way on the ballot.  At least in my state.  

In my county, the Registrars office drops off the mail in ballots to these facilities but they have to trust that th people getting the ballot do not have some condition that prevents them from acting of their own accord.  Who decides that if they already have an incapacitated adjudication. 

Then who collect the ballots and drops them at the appropriate location?  It should be the same one that fills out the ballot for the person or a designated person if it is only for ballot drop off.  

So who is mentally functional and who is not in this institutional environment? Who decides?

A family member may be the appointee but that still leaves many that don’t have family close by.  

I think all of these physical barriers could easily be overcome. Those are just logistics - what’s more important is who has the mental capacity to vote if they have already been announced to be incapacitated by the courts?  Who verifies? ***]

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