Abstract
While voting laws trend toward universal suffrage, there are still some who encounter barriers in exercising the right to vote. Citizens with mental illness or cognitive and emotional impairments are especially vulnerable to exclusion from the political process, contributing to disenfranchisement. Facilitating the process for hospitalized patients to vote can increase their agency and amplify their voices and concerns. Through exercising their civic responsibility, psychiatric patients can have a hand in shaping a community in which they feel valued. In this article we will review the literature about voting, the current voting laws, and our lessons learned facilitating voting by proxy at Cambridge Hospital in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, as well as the obstacles encountered. We will also propose methods to improve implementation of voting by hospitalized psychiatric patients for upcoming elections.
Footnotes
Disclosures of financial or other potential conflicts of interest: None.
- © 2018 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law