With just three months left before Election Day, patient advocates are pushing long-term care facilities to make sure their residents are both registered to vote and able to cast their ballots.
Carrie Leljedal, a family caregiver-turned-advocate, has launched #LTCVotes, a national campaign to encourage nursing home participation nationwide. She plans to request the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reissue guidance originally sent in October 2020 that affirmed residents’ right to vote.
During the pandemic, residents weren’t getting absentee ballots because mail was being restricted over concerns about virus contamination or they weren’t able to go vote in person, Leljedal told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News on Thursday.
“It was going on all over,” Leljedal said. “We heard it repeatedly.”
The ability of seniors to cast their own ballots when they can’t necessarily get to in-person polling places — and the wisdom of allowing them to have a say in national elections — have been crudely called into question this election cycle and in the past.
Leljedal, who is from Illinois and works with the Gray Panthers, hosted a kick off meeting last week to grow support for the long-term care voting rights movement this fall. Facilities must “have a plan to ensure residents can exercise their right to vote, whether in-person, by mail, absentee or other authorized process,” according to the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care.
Leldedal’s passion stems from her son’s experience. When her son, Lynn Ray, turned 18, Leljedal said he was adamant that he register and be able to vote. Unfortunately, he landed in the hospital on election day that year and his dad scrambled to get a letter from the hospital to allow them to get Lynn Ray an absentee ballot.
Now residing in an Intermediate Care Facility for Developmentally Disabled, Lynn Ray wanted to vote as a way to preserve the services he needed.
“When people move into a facility of any kind, they need to retain all their rights,” Leljedal said. “There’s a lot of great places that are making sure their residents are getting to vote, but there’s just as many that aren’t.”
One of the former is Chase City Health & Rehab Center in Mecklenburg County, VA. The staff there recently helped two men who had fulfilled their sentences for previous crimes restore their voting rights.
“The ability to exercise their right to vote means the world to all our residents,” Administrator Robin Parrott told McKnight’s in an email Thursday. “It means that they are still a vital part of our community. It means they can continue with another community task that they had before admitting here. It’s a freedom and a right to vote. LTC residents who still get to vote get to feel as if they still matter.”
A success story in Virginia
Parrott said Activity Director Amy Brooks and Admissions Director Melissa Price spearheaded the efforts to restore voting rights to Willie Gayles, 64, and Ernest Robertson, 73. After receiving the certificate that affirmed his right to vote, an emotional Robertson told a local TV news station, “I have a voice now. I didn’t have a voice before, but now, I have a voice.”
But the responsibility of helping residents exercise their voting rights doesn’t stop with ensuring that they can legally do so.
Parrott said facility staff will help residents work through issues such as deficits in reading, poor vision or hearing, physical limitations, changes of address, and obtaining resources to help residents decide for whom to vote. They make sure residents are registered to receive absentee ballots or will provide transportation for those who can and want to vote in person.
“They are trying to maintain their independence,” Parrott said.
Since states set their own deadlines for when absentee ballots must be requested. A CMS spokesperson told McKnight’s on Thursday that the 2020 memo remains current.
“Nursing homes must ensure residents are able to exercise their right to vote,” the emailed statement said. “We continue to encourage states, localities, and nursing home owners and administrators to collaborate to ensure residents’ right to vote is not impeded.”
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