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Senior Citizen Politics
Many Senior Citizens in Nursing Homes Will Not Be
Voting Super Tuesday
Committee on Aging focuses on voting
barriers for senior citizens
 Feb.
4, 2008 – Last Thursday, Senate Special Committee on Aging Chairman Herb
Kohl (D-WI) held a hearing on older voters and barriers they face in
exercising their right to vote, with a specific focus on states
participating in tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primaries. Kohl and Rules
Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein also sent a letter requesting that
the Election Assistance Commission conduct research on voting within
long-term care settings and develop voluntary guidelines to help states
facilitate such voting.
Of the 24 states holding primaries on Super
Tuesday, only eight facilitate voting in long-term care settings either
by setting up public polling locations on the premises, sending election
officials into the home to assist seniors, or helping nursing home
administrators obtain absentee ballots in advance.
The other 16 states currently make no
accommodations for voters living in a long-term care setting, and
long-term care administrators are offered no direction from election
officials as to how they should assist their residents with voting,
according to information presented at the hearing..
“There is no reason for states to fall down on the
job of voter accessibility. We know that innovative mechanisms exist to
allow older and disabled Americans to vote regardless of their physical
abilities,” said Kohl.
“If we do not remove the barriers that prevent
elderly and disabled citizens from exercising their right to vote, then
we are – for all intents and purposes – disenfranchising them.”
The hearing covered issues of poll accessibility,
voting within long-term care settings, and on-going concerns that the
Voter ID law currently pending before the Supreme Court could
disproportionately disenfranchise seniors.
Older individuals as a whole represent a
politically-active group, particularly during primary elections which
typically attract a lower level of voter turnout. During last week’s
Nevada primary, 45 percent of the Republican vote and 36 percent of the
Democratic vote was comprised of those 60 years of age and older.
Barbara D. Bovbjerg, Director of Education,
Workforce and Income Security Issues at the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, discussed issues surrounding senior
transportation and mobility, ballot design, and poll site accessibility
for the disabled. Older voters with a disability are 39 to 48 percent
less likely to vote than their peers without a disability.
During the 2000 elections, GAO found that only 16
percent of polling sites surveyed nationwide were fully accessible to
people with disabilities.
Kohl has asked GAO to follow-up on their previous
study by monitoring the level of accessibility during the 2008
elections.
Michael Waterstone, Associate Professor of Law at
Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, also spoke to challenges with voter
accessibility at the polls, the pros and cons to absentee balloting,
laws currently in place to safeguard older and disabled voters, and the
need for stronger enforcement.
Deborah Markowitz, Vermont’s Secretary of State,
offered testimony on the role Vermont has played as a leader in
expanding voting opportunities for individuals with physical and
cognitive impairment. Vermont—which will hold its primary on March
4—has a ‘vote-by-phone’ system and is implementing a mobile voting
demonstration project to better facilitate voting within long-term care
settings.
Dr. Jason Karlawish, Associate Professor of
Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, provided
an overview of which Super Tuesday states have guidelines to facilitate
voting in long-term care settings, which do not, and the resulting
implications. He also laid out a model system for voting in long-term
care settings.
Wendy Weiser, Deputy Director of the Democracy
Project at NYU Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, conveyed to the
committee how the Voter ID law under consideration by the Supreme Court
unduly burdens seniors and why it should be overturned, providing
examples of seniors that would be disenfranchised due to the law.
A 2005 study by the University of Wisconsin found
that 23 percent of people age 65 and older in the state of Wisconsin –
roughly 177,000 older voters – do not have a driver’s license or other
photo ID.
A webcast of the hearing will can be viewed on the
Committee Website:
www.aging.senate.gov
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