Legal Commentary

If you knew you had dementia, would you refrain from voting? If you were caring for a person with dementia, would you refrain from helping them vote?

The Census Bureau has reported that more than 23 million American adults ? close to 10 percent ? have conditions limiting mental functioning, including learning and intellectual disabilities and Alzheimer?s disease or other forms of dementia.... Many will be effectively disenfranchised.... Workers in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, as well as family members, may refuse to assist impaired voters because they believe that dementia disqualifies them. It doesn?t. A diagnosis of cognitive impairment does not bar someone from voting. Voters need pass no cognitive tests. They don?t have to be able to name the candidates or explain the issues.

Not everything is controlled by law. There is also a realm of ethics. Getting votes from people who don't understand what they are doing is rather obviously ethically wrong. The law is the way it is to keep the authorities from unfairly excluding people in a country where tests were once used in order to exclude black people. But there are many people who don't know what they're doing and they shouldn't be urged to vote. It's ethically correct for them to take themselves out of a choice-making activity that they don't understand. And it is ethically wrong to use an older person to collect a vote for the candidate that you want to win. 

The article ends with the conclusion of one personal story:

On Oct. 8, after considerable discussion, Judith Kozlowski helped her father make his selections. He allowed her to disclose that, after a lifetime of voting Republican, this time he had voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr....

Full post as published by Althouse on October 19, 2020 (boomark / email).