NYT: States Face Decisions on Who Is Mentally Fit to Vote

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/us/19vote.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

States Face Decisions on Who Is Mentally Fit to Vote

By PAM BELLUCK
Published: June 19, 2007


CRANSTON, R.I. — Behind the barbed wire and thick walls of the state mental hospital here are two patients who have not been allowed to live in the outside world for 20 years. Both were found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

Still, they have voted in elections nearly every two years, casting ballots by mail. Now, however, election officials are taking steps that could ban them from voting, arguing that state law denies the vote to people with such serious psychiatric impairments.

“I just think if you are declared insane you should not be allowed to vote, period,” said Joseph DeLorenzo, chairman of the Cranston Board of Canvassers. “Some people are taking these two clowns and calling them disabled persons. Is insanity a disability? I have an answer to that: no. You’re insane; you’re nuts.”

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.”


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[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[dogday]

6. By those standards at least half of the Democratic

candidates would not be able to vote.....

[fasttense]

2. Since we allow the mentally ill to run for election,

we should allow them to vote.

[Nihil]

3. Good point.

And there's certainly enough of them around ...

[Bitwit1234]

5. Dang if you are correct about that I was going to post it also.

[monmouth]

4. This would eliminate a great percentage of those 28 percenters....