What Voting in Long-Term Care Can Teach the Rest of Us

Abstract

“How a society treats its most vulnerable . . . is always the measure of its humanity.” Nina Kohn and Casey Smith’s excellent Defending Voting Rights in Long-Term Care Institutions chronicles our systemic failings in ensuring the effective exercise of the franchise for residents in long-term care. This response piece draws broader lessons from their research, explaining how the lapses they document shine light on aspects of the electoral system we have constructed more generally.

Specifically, this response piece notes that unnecessary logistical, informational, and cognitive burdens on the franchise are endemic not only in long-term care contexts, but in many electoral settings. And for some, those burdens represent features rather than bugs, screening would-be voters in illegitimate fashion for worthiness rather than qualification.

But one notable element of the law of long-term care institutions, while radically underenforced, offers hope as a model. In most other contexts, though elections are a fundamentally public process, American election law generally shifts the cost of the enterprise to voters and nonprofits. In contrast, several federal statutes and regulations require providers to offer affirmative support for voters exercising the franchise in long-term care settings. That sort of mandate for meaningful customer service, meeting voters where they are, presents possibilities for a promising change in orientation.

Keywords: voting, elections, franchise, burdens, customer service, disability, long-term care