“Hundreds of Thousands of Nursing Home Residents May Not Be Able to Vote in November Because of the Pandemic”

ProPublica:

How to vote during a pandemic poses a dilemma for many Americans, who worry about the health risks of voting in person and whether the U.S. Postal Service will be able to deliver mail-in ballots on time. Such concerns are multiplied for nursing home residents.

Most, though not all, of the roughly 2.2 million Americans living in nursing homes or assisted living communities are elderly — and thus at higher risk of dying from the coronavirus. They’re also part of the most politically engaged demographic in the country. In 2018, 66% of Americans over 65 voted, compared with just 35% of those 18 to 29. In 2016, Donald Trump had an advantage over Hillary Clinton among voters 65 and older by 53% to 44%, according to the Pew Research Center.

At least 68,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic outbreak began, some 41% of all coronavirus deaths in the U.S., according to a New York Times analysis. This ongoing crisis at care facilities across the country has had a troubling hidden effect: the looming mass disenfranchisement of America’s elderly and disabled. Hutchins is one of hundreds of thousands of residents of nursing homes and assisted living communities who may not be not able to vote this year because of coronavirus related-lockdowns and the failure of state and county officials to help a forgotten population of voters.

Family and friends who helped them vote in prior elections can’t visit them — and may have taken ill or died from COVID-19 themselves. Swing states such as Florida and Wisconsin have suspended efforts to send teams to nursing homes to assist with voting. Despite a federal law that residents must be “supported by the facility in the exercise of” their rights, two states — North Carolina and Louisiana — prohibit staff from actively doing so. While many other states allow voters to appoint a helper of their choice, voting assistance may be a low priority for understaffed institutions struggling with COVID-19 outbreaks. And polling places are being moved from nursing homes and assisted living facilities to sites less affected by the virus. For example, Somerville, Massachusetts, relocated voting from a nursing home to a school a little less than a mile away.

“The hurdles are so high for people that are living in long-term care facilities — people who don’t have access to or who need different levels of help,” said Lori Smetanka, executive director of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, an advocacy group. “I really think disenfranchising that entire population — we’re in real danger of that at this point.”

Under federal law, nursing homes have a duty to facilitate residents’ rights, including voting, said Nina Kohn, a distinguished scholar in elder law at Yale University. But even before the pandemic, compliance was spotty. From 2018 through 2019, Medicare documented complaints from at least 55 U.S. nursing homes in which residents said they weren’t given the opportunity to vote or were unable to get help casting a ballot. But nursing home inspectors categorized the vast majority of these complaints as low severity, meaning they were seen as inflicting little or no actual harm.

As a result, fines for violating residents’ voting rights are rare. Nursing home inspectors, Kohn said, do not take such violations seriously. “What you have is a system where the deprivation of our fundamental civil liberties never arises as being classified as real harm,” she said. “You’ve got a whole category of violations where there are virtually no consequences.”

Some nursing homes have begun adjusting procedures ahead of Nov. 3. Chris Hannon, the chief operating officer of Pointe Group Care, a nursing home operator in Massachusetts, said his staff is working to ensure residents are mailed absentee ballots. Although he hasn’t seen problems, “it becomes as challenging of a job as any other responsibility that we have,” he said.

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