What should be done with Elderly's vote........

[serryjw]

IF they have Alzheimer and don't KNOW what they are doing?

Unfortunately someone else is voting for them and this could be a BIG problem.

[Barney Rocks]

1. usually when people

are considered incompetent, someone else is taking care of all their affairs (paying the bills etc) and their vote is also taken away (because they are not competent).

However, if a person is taking care of themselves (even if they seem a bit batty) they still have a vote and they have the right to exercise it. Unfortunately, a relative may "help" them vote--but there is little that can be done about that.

I actually think we come out a little ahead here--I always hit every nursing home in my area when I register voters.

[serryjw]

2. NOT exactly.........

IF a spouse has Alzheimers the other spouse may very well vote for them. IF they have not moved in years the absentee ballot will come to the home. As the country gets older this could be come more and more of a problem.

[Barney Rocks]

3. so you are thinking

of a very specific kind of case--where the person is too incompetent to make any kind of decision--but has not been declared incompetent because they have a spouse who is caring for them.

I think this would be rare--an Alzheimer's patient (or anyone who is completely incompetent) requires so much care that it would be impossible to hide the situation from medical professionals etc. But yes--in such a situation, if they had not been declared incompetent, the spouse would fill out the ballet--and I doubt anything can be done about it.

If you know of a specific case, you could accuse the person of voter fraud--but you would have to prove the spouse was completely mentally incompetent and that the person willfully did this without any knowledge on the spouse's part. And it would appear quite nasty and petty to do this to a person who is the sole support for a completely incapacitated person. I would let well enough alone.

[Heath.Hunnicutt]

4. It's not so common to declare people incompetent

People sometimes sort of 'fade away' from us and a lot of times it's too poignant to declare them incompetent 'needlessly.'

I can't imagine a nice policy for helping with this.

I think we may as well focus on communicating out to the majority of the population. Remember the demographic can be drawn so that it looks like a pyramid of sorts -- there are a lot of babies at the base where the age-axis is zero, and it is narrow at the top, for people in their 80's or so.

For another example, I would suggest that our society doesn't deal with competency of the aging and automobile driving effectively.

[Barney Rocks]

5. Drs. have people declared incompetent

as a matter of course when people cannot take care of themselves--lawyers do as well. (I have plenty of both Drs. and lawyers in my family--and so I am familiar with this.)