September 21, 2004
WTF : They'll even wheel in the demented to steal a vote?
by Liza Sabater
Rox goes ballistic in Rox Populi : Mentally Incapacitated Voters, after reading Dementia and the Voter (washingtonpost.com)
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.
My father died of dementia and was so crippled by it that the mortician had to "rearrange" his body in order to fit it properly in the casket. I cannot for the life of me imagine wheeling in people ravaged by dementia or Alzheimer's so they can vote. These are seriously incapacitated people to begin with. How can you not vote if you've been convicted of a felony (no matter how violent the crime or how well you've been defended or even if you were innocent to begin with) but there is no questioning of a nurse "helping" their patient to vote?
This is not just outright unethical, it is illegal.
What is most perverse with this whole thing is the corruption of federalism. The United States is too big a country to leave it to states to decide who gets to vote and how. It is outrageous there are is not a federal voting law in place. Reagan was all about priming this country to be the banana superpower the Bushes have revealed it to be.
What is sad about this piece of news is that, coupled with the double-dipping voting written up by the New York Daily News, when I first read this I just rolled my eyes. I'm so overwhelmed by the reports coming out about electoral fraud that it took me a few days to actually register the enormity of this Washington Post report.
Can you imagine the reaction of people who marginally follow the news?
Posted by Liza Sabater in 2004 Elections, Ethics, Government, Law, W T F
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