Neuroscience
Snips from an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer concerning the JAMA article:
Dementia poses challenge when it's time to vote
The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Stacey Burling
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Posted on Tue, Sep. 14, 2004
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[ ... Read the full article ... ] (free registration required)
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Neuroscience
Dementia and The Voter - Part 2
Snips from an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer concerning the JAMA article:
Dementia poses challenge when it's time to vote
The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Stacey Burling
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Posted on Tue, Sep. 14, 2004
Snip:
"It's clear the states have paid woefully inadequate attention to this issue," said Paul S. Appelbaum, chair of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and one of the authors.
"Everybody with dementia at some point will cross the line from being able to do lots of tasks, including voting, to not being able to do that," he added. "There is a need to define the line."
Snip:
They say people with dementia should be encouraged - and helped - to vote as long as they understand the process. That includes thinking about how people with dementia or other mental problems react to something as confusing as Florida's notorious butterfly ballot. Simpler ballots with larger type and possibly even pictures might make them better voters.
"We need to think about cognitive accessibility, not just physical accessibility," said Jason Karlawish, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who is one of the research group's leaders.
Snip:
Karlawish became interested in the issue after the 2000 election, when he read an Internet discussion by Alzheimer's caregivers. One wrote: "Since we have been married, he has always voted a straight Democratic ticket, so I did the same for him. . . . I do not feel guilty."
Voting rights cannot be transferred from one person to another, Karlawish said, but many caregivers don't know that.
He has also come across a handful of examples of questionable voting from nursing homes. Leonard Kiczek, a lawyer in Bayonne, N.J., discovered one of them during the Democratic primary in June. A bloc of absentee votes from a single nursing home swung a local election to candidates promoted by a rival Democratic faction. One of the candidates worked for the nursing home. Kiczek filed suit after he learned that party loyalists had been involved in helping people with dementia fill out their ballots.
Kiczek, a former Bayonne mayor who later dropped the suit, said the incident convinced him that lawmakers needed to pay attention to this issue. "People took advantage of these residents," he said.
A conversation with two sisters illustrates the other end of the spectrum, Karlawish said. He asked them if their father, who has Alzheimer's disease, wants to vote. "I don't think my dad is capable of doing that," one said. The other said: "Well, maybe he is. How would you know?" Karlawish talked to the man and thinks he could vote.
Snip:
Lillian Carter, 86, of South Philadelphia, said voting was important to her husband, Leroy, who continued to vote after being diagnosed in his last couple of years of life with Alzheimer's. He went to the polls right up to his death at age 92.
"He always wanted to vote. I can't remember him ever missing a year," said Carter, who was attending a Bible study class today at the Philadelphia Senior Center on South Broad Street. Their son would drive them to the polling place, and her husband would go into the voting booth alone.
"We didn't force him to go," she said. "He understood. . . . He never got completely out of it like some people."
[ ... Read the full article ... ] (free registration required)
- How To Increase Voter Turnout
The political parties don't agree on much but what they do all agree on is that the more people who exercise their right to vote, the better. Psychology can help. A new study shows that phone calls to encourage people to vote can be made more effective...
- Want To Achieve Something? Picture Yourself Doing It From A Third-person Perspective
'Visualise yourself doing it' is a common slice of advice for people seeking to achieve something. But there are two ways of visualising yourself in a scene: from a first-person perspective as in real-life, or from an external perspective, as...
- Upcoming Event: Philadelphia, 23 February 2006
From the College of Physicians of Philadelphia website: 23 February 2006 6:00 PM 19 South 22nd Street, Philadelphia Section on Medicine and the Arts Salon. "Alzheimer's Narratives: Voicing the Experience of Patients and Families." David H....
- Dementia Voting Project
As a follow-up to this week's news about dementia and the voter, I note that the senior author of the JAMA article has a funded project to examine this issue, called the Dementia Voting Project [project website]. According to the site's homepage: ...
- Where You Vote Affects Your Vote
I spotted this little item today in Scientific American:"Location, location, location. We all know it’s true of real estate. But it may also apply to the ballot box. Because a team of American researchers has found that where people vote affects how...