Snippets from a University of Arkansas news release
Of the 50 states in our nation, 44 contain constitutional laws and statutes that bar individuals with emotional or cognitive impairment from voting," said Kay Schriner, research fellow at the Fulbright Institute of International Relations. "The only other group of Americans who face such disenfranchisement are convicted felons."
According to Schriner's research, the practice of revoking voting rights for people with mental disabilities began with the earliest state constitutions, drafted and ratified in the 1700s. Early American politicians felt that excluding "the idiot and insane" would ensure that the voting public consisted only of those capable of making informed and intelligent political decisions.
But as medical and social concepts of mental disability continued to evolve, these exclusionary laws were neither altered nor erased. In fact, states persisted in drafting and amending their constitutions to include such laws until as late as 1959.
As these issues come to light, it becomes increasingly important that people with disabilities -- both physical and mental -- be allowed to participate in the formation of policies that directly affect them.
Rather than making a blanket discrimination against people with mental illnesses, Schriner suggests that states conduct individual assessments of competency before banning a person from the election process. Yet even this can cause personal humiliation and could be viewed as a form of discrimination, Schriner said.
A better solution would be to throw out the disenfranchisement laws altogether and follow one simple rule: if a person can fill out a voting registration card, that person should then be considered competent to vote.
"Someone in an active psychotic state is not likely to sit down and register to vote or to visit their local polling place," said Schriner. "It's ridiculous even to worry about that, let alone write a law to prevent it."
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