Should the Mentally Ill be Allowed to Vote?
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007No, I’m not talking about liberals.
There is a very interesting article in the New York Times which looks at this question in depth.
Rhode Island is among a growing number of states grappling with the question of who is too mentally impaired to vote. The issue is drawing attention for two major reasons: increasing efforts by the mentally ill and their advocates to secure voting rights, and mounting concern by psychiatrists and others who work with the elderly about the rights and risks of voting by people with conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
This summer, recommendations for national standards will be released by a group of psychiatrists, lawyers and others led by the American Bar Association, suggesting that people be prevented from voting only if they cannot indicate, with or without help, “a specific desire to participate in the voting process.”
Some state skirmishes involve efforts to ease restrictions, while others involve specific cases that compel officials to clarify old laws.
And with research showing that many people with dementia or other impairments vote or want to, there is also a desire to ensure they are not pressured to vote certain ways.
“There’s a lot of people out there who either don’t have adequate access to the ballot and should, or could be vulnerable to overreaching political types who want to take advantage of their votes to swing an election,” said Charles Sabatino, director of the commission on law and aging at the bar association.
As far as I am concerned, if a person is not metally competent enough to manage their own affairs, they should no longer be allowed to vote. I mean, if you don’t have the mental capacity to decide when to pay your bills or when to go to the grocery store, I hardly think that you have the capacity to make a decision regarding who is going to hold elected office. Also, as the above quote mentions, I worry about pressure being exerted on these types of folks to vote a certain way by unscrupulous individuals.
Recent local elections in Alabama, South Carolina and elsewhere have included accusations of ballots cast on behalf of nursing home residents who were incompetent to vote. In New Jersey, a nursing home employee who won a 2004 election to a county Democratic committee stepped down because her victory resulted from absentee ballots cast by the nursing home residents.
As shown above, it just seems to me that allowing the mentally ill to vote is just ripe for fraud and misuse.
The following is the scariest paragraph in the entire article:
“He has to have someone manage his money for him and make his medical decisions,” Ms. Clarke said. “But Sebastian is able to make a political decision.”
If a person doesn’t have the mental capacity to make decisions regarding his own welfare, how in the world can he be allowed to make decisions which are going to effect everyone’s welfare?
Obviously, this is a difficult situation with no easy answers. You’d like to think that everyone at the polls can make a competent decision regarding an election, but the right to vote as guaranteed by the Constitution leaves this question to the States, and the States have numerous definitions of who is and isn’t competent to vote.
What do you think? When should a person loose their right to vote due to mental illness, if ever?
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