Are YOU mentally competent to vote?

[undergroundpanther]

States are picking and choosing who's competent to vote now.
The backlash against"mental illness" cometh.


States Face Decisions on Who Is Mentally Fit to Vote


Joseph DeLorenzo of Rhode Island wants to prevent voting by people declared insane.

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.

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


About the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel(DSM) shrinks use to label people.

The DSM is a powerful tool of social control, as its criteria is a primary tool used to judge who is normal or abnormal, sane or insane or who should remain free or be hospitalized against their will.

http://www.drozur.com/dsmcritique.html

DSM Reinforcing patriarchy
http://www.evoyage.com/ManInTheMist/ChapterSixMist.htm

The Trap
http://happenchance.co.uk/archives/2007/05/23/the-trap-what-happened-to-our-dream-of-freedom/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOEB05_3-p0

Medical fascism
http://medfascism.blogspot.com/2006/11/psychiatric-coercion-serves-drug.html
How normal was invented
http://www.mouthmag.com/issues/74/pp12-13no74.html

The man who invented Normal
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring02/Holland/Galton.htm
http://www.psych.utah.edu/gordon/Classes/Psy4905Docs/PsychHistory/Cards/Galton.html

[Kerrytravelers]

1. I'm thinking that anyone who voted for Bush should be placed right into that "not competent to

vote" list.

[mdmc]

2. Right now I think that everyone is allowed to vote in NYS

both the MR and the MH population are currently entitled to vote in NYS.

This makes me :mad: . Thank you for the OP and discussion....

[Lance_Boyle]

3. there's a good bit of difference between

"mentally ill" and "criminally insane and institutionalized because of it." Mentally ill who function in society have no voting rights problems that this article points out. Insane killers who are institutionalized for the protection of society ought not to be voting.

[Mythsaje]

4. Yes, yes,

those certified criminally insane are SUCH a large voting bloc that they're going to make a difference in the outcome. Sheesh.

It's the ones (roughly 30% of the population) who are nucking futz but are allowed to vote anyway that's screwing it up for the rest of us.

[lonestarnot]

7. Well said!

:toast:

[Cleita]

5. According to the neo-Nazi Republicans, anyone who doesn't vote conservative

is mentally impaired.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Kerrytravelers]

12. self-delete

[nancyr]

6. Other concerns.

I'm more concerned with if the people we're given to vote for are mentally competent to actually run.

[emilyg]

9. agree.

[undergroundpanther]

8. According to the shrinks

I fear I would be denied voting. I have a mental illness. According to the assholes defining what is "normal".
Sadly a lot of people believe in the myth of normal. People use this word "normal" everyday,as an adjective, totally unaware the term comes from Francis Galton the inventor of EUGENICS!

I added more links to my OP. Check them out.

[Warpy]

11. Insane doesn't always mean mentally incompetent

because someone who is criminally insane, an example would be Dahmer, would have enough of a grip on reality to weigh political issues independently of his overwhelming need to lure young males to his flat, kill them, and eat them. Yes, I know he was found sane enough to stand trial, but the legal definition is very narrow. Face it, his major screws were loose.

Old folks in nursing homes with dementia routinely vote, or have either staff or family members vote for them, something that is clearly illegal. They are not mentally competent to vote but that right has not been suspended. They are registered and the absentee ballots come in like clockwork.

Unmedicated bipolars can be crazy as shithouse rats (the precise medical term) but can still know enough about the issues that they can cast fairly rational votes.

I would be loath to hinge voting rights on a definition of sanity. I would be more inclined to hinge them on ability, the ability to hear, read or finger sign the options and choose among them.

I don't particularly care if I would consider that choice rational. After all, I've been through two Reagan terms and two different BFEE administrations and I know few people vote rationally.

It's just that the alternatives are all worse.

[undergroundpanther]

16. Mental illness

Is defined by this culture is about claiming others, the INCOMPETENCE to think and make sound judgments/thoughts.That's why anyone gets called insane. It's more often than not used to control others.

To be labeled with a "diagnosis" from the every expanding DSM IV means something about your thoughts, personally is "unacceptable",about your"sanity"and lack of your"normality".

Just look at how much the word nuts,loon,crackpot, tin foil,paranoid,crazy is used to shut down differing opinions, novel ideas, silence dissent,shame a victim so they will be less able to expose a perpetrator's actions, or silence a person's emotions from being expressed.

"Crazy" is a very commonly used pejorative tool by some to exert social control and limit others speech,and stop others views from being taken as legitimately as their own. I see people using"crazy" to dominate and control others all the time..

[shadowknows69]

13. Actually probably not

but I'm a damn sight more sane than the bozos in our government.

[undergroundpanther]

14. You DO know about the New Freedom Commission

To screen EVERY American for Mental illness right?


New Mental Health Initiave Fowards Psychiatry's Brave New World of Totalitarian Rule to Diagnose at Will

Diagnostic "Screening" Process is a Con-Game To Troll For New Patients

According to the British Medical Journal, a sweeping U.S. mental health initiative will be unveiled in July which proposes to screen every man, woman and child in America for mental "illness." The initiative was prompted by a March 2004 progress report by The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. President George W. Bush appointed the commission to advise him on ways of improving the mental health system. However, psychiatric advice has grossly misled the President and the American people.

The progress report, entitled the New Freedom Initiative, has failed to advise the President on the real crisis in mental health - the fraudulent premise for screening for "mental illness" and the psychiatric drugging of millions of Americans. Under the recommendations psychiatrists and psychologists are seeking government-sanctioned power to "screen" every child for "mental illness" through public schools, and every adult during general medical examinations. The "screening" criteria is based on the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), a diagnostic manual that international mental health experts voted in 2000 to be one of the worst psychiatric texts in the last millennium.
http://www.cchr.org/index.cfm/8030
More
http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/psych-drug-corp/tmap
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200404/msg00191.html
http://www.beverlye.com/200410131912.html
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/10/31.php

My articles On this issue.

Compassionate conservatism
http://www.unknownnews.org/070602a-Panther.html
And New Freedom Commission
http://www.unknownnews.net/040712a-upits.html
Nami
http://www.unknownnews.net/050129d-28up.html


And to make sure we don't sneak in and vote ,the governments want to microchip the mentally ill.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/17/ncrime17.xml



Actual 1974 Congressional Testimony of Dr. Jose Delgado -

"We need a program of PSYCHOSURGERY for POLITICAL CONTROL of our society. The purpose is PHISICAL CONTROL OF THE MIND. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be SURGICALLY MUTILATED.

"The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective.

"Man does NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must ELECTRICALLY CONTROL THE BRAIN. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."

Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado Director of Neuropsychiatry Yale University Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974

(Author of "PHYSICAL CONTROL OF THE MIND" 1969)

[Kerrytravelers]

15. So, the government is going to interview each registered voter to determine their mental stability

to vote?

[undergroundpanther]

17. Maybe

It's been done before.Always "for our own good".You know..

...

To be a mental patient is to be stigmatized, ostracized, socialized, patronized, psychiatrized.
.....
To be a mental patient is to have everyone controlling your life but you. You’re watched by your shrink, your social worker, your friends, your family. And then you’re diagnosed as paranoid.
.....
To be a mental patient is to wear a label, and that label never goes away, a label that says little about what you are and even less about who you are.
....

To be a mental patient is to act glad when you’re sad and calm when you’re mad, and to always be “appropriate.”

......
To be a mental patient is not to die, even if you want to — and not cry, and not hurt, and not be scared, and not be angry, and not be vulnerable, and not to laugh too loud — because, if you do, you only prove that you are a mental patient even if you are not.

And so you become a no-thing, in a no-world, and you are not.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/undergroundpanther/24

[Kerrytravelers]

18. When was it done before?

Seriously, I'm not being an a**hole, I just have no idea to what you are referring.

[undergroundpanther]

20. Here's a few Examples

In the US and Elsewhere
http://psychwatch.blogspot.com/2006_09_03_archive.html
http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/mad.htm
http://www.successfulschizophrenia.org/stories/mosher.html
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7429/1449
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/421002
http://shr.aaas.org/aaashran/alert.php?a_id=310

Here are some people trying to change this..system.
There are abuse of psychiatry stories on this site too.
http://www.mindfreedom.org/

[Kerrytravelers]

21. Thanks for the links. I will check them out when I have time to read them all the way through.

:hi:

[VP505]

19. I have worked

as an election presiding judge for about the last 20 or so years, judging from the people I see at the polls, if mental competency was a requirement to vote the list of eligible voters would be pretty short.

[undergroundpanther]

22. I know

And that's what these pigs in power WANT, Total full spectrum Social CONTROL. Control over every aspect of our lives. They DO NOT want people to develop their own minds.Because if we DO they will not for long keep their cushy lives and they will not be able to claim"ruler-ship" by "divine right" anymore or justify their own luxurious lives of ease to the rightfully outraged masses..

Actual 1974 Congressional Testimony of Dr. Jose Delgado -

"We need a program of PSYCHO SURGERY for POLITICAL CONTROL of our society. The purpose is PHYSICAL CONTROL OF THE MIND. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be SURGICALLY MUTILATED.

"The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective.

"Man does NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must ELECTRICALLY CONTROL THE BRAIN. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."

Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado Director of Neuropsychiatry Yale University Medical School Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974

(Author of "PHYSICAL CONTROL OF THE MIND" 1969)

[RedCappedBandit]

23. This is absurd for so many reasons

first of all, how many people who are institutionalized and declared criminally insane are voting, anyway?
Over 40% of the population will suffer through a mental illness at some point in their life..
you wont ever be able to find all the people who are actually "insane", anyway..
the people who support such legislature probably don't even know the definition of insane to begin with.
its just absurd.

hell, the most dangerous people suffering from a mental illness are probably the same people who would be experienced and intelligent enough to be able to lie their way out of a diagnosis.

[alarimer]

24. The 30% who still approve of bush are clearly not competent to vote

They are delusional at best.

Seriously though, I don't think mental illness should be a bar to voting. Of course I guess it depends on diagnosis.

[Hubert Flottz]

25. There goes Bush's base!