Or, indeed, voting with any
form of mental incapacity in any election.
The Scottish election looms. I’ve received
the postal ballots. Those are filled out and returned. The procedure, one vaccine
jab down, is to post the ballots at midnight so as to avoid absolutely everyone
and their dogs.
It is still hard to avoid people and their
dogs at midnight.
What does it mean to vote, if you are a
dementia carer? And what does it mean to vote, if you are listed as no longer
having capacity?
It all means one thing, and that’s the main
thing.
The main thing is postal voting. Going to
the ballot box is out of the question at this stage, for reasons of infirmity
on the one hand and Covid on the other. I arranged postal voting to make being
a carer easier.
Yes, I am a carer with Power of Attorney –
but that doesn’t mean a damn thing when it comes to voting.
In case you missed that. Power of Attorney
does not allow you to vote on someone else’s behalf.
Once upon another time, people without
mental capacity – we’ll say those with dementia, for brevity – those people
didn’t get to vote. That was society’s view. Things change. Sometimes they
change for the better.
I don’t vote in person as that saves me
time. The job of carer means preserving time at home. If I can arrange
something online instead of in person, I will. When it is easier to make a
phone call than to visit, I phone. If someone can step in and handle a matter
on my behalf, someone steps in.
Even if I have to go to a venue in person,
it’s better to be driven there in a car than to spend excessive amounts of time
on public transport.
The problem with voting in person has
nothing to do with walking to the polling station. This place is almost always
in the same location. A short distance away. The problem is in not knowing how
busy it is. A sudden unexpected queue destroys all plans.
And so…
I vote by post. My mother, with dementia,
also votes by post. She just can’t walk there, any longer. The very last time
she voted in person, I made sure she took the bus. Saved her legs. Now, we have
to throw Covid into the mixture…
The next election is bound to occur before
we receive our second vaccine doses – and those doses need an extra two weeks
to kick in after the jag gets all jaggy.
So. For reasons of time management and
reasons of Covid, as well as reduced mobility, we vote by post.
But I don’t vote on her behalf. That’s
illegal.
When I vote by post, I add my signature to
the document.
Her arthritis made signing her name more
difficult. When failing concentration became a factor, it would take half an
hour for her to vote by post. I made sure she tried her signature on a blank
piece of paper ahead of the actual signing.
Obviously, I’d had enough of that after one
long attempt to get her into the frame of mind to reel off her name on a piece
of paper. When voting by post, you can apply for a signature waiver. She no
longer has to sign her name when voting.
All
she needs to do is put a cross in a box.
I’m going to talk about Christmas cards,
now. She kept a lot of addresses for people in her head. Every year, I receive
at least one card from someone I can’t reply to. Where the fuck do these people
stay?
If someone starts to develop dementia, you
need to get the Christmas list slapped down in writing. And now, back to
electoral talk. When dementia comes along, you should also ask after the
person’s voting preference. This is as awkward as you want to make it. Good
luck with that.
Fortunately, I knew the preference – and it
has never changed.
What does that mean for the process, in
terms of making things easier? I cannot vote on her behalf, not even with Power
of Attorney. But I can offer assistance and guidance. Like I said, when she had
to sign her name, not just for voting, I would get a few dry-runs in place
before we turned to the main event.
Assistance means providing pencils and pens
and paper and something to lean on. All other activity is cleared away. So this
is done in mid-evening. No interruptions. You get the signature going. Do it
again a few times.
I found the easiest method was to hunt out a
genuine signature. And she could copy that. I didn’t sign anything on her
behalf. Instead, I just made it easier for her to sign by herself. And it is
good for the person to engage in this hefty mental activity. Keep them engaged
in the world around them as long as you can.
By degrees, engagement slips away. But I was
prepared to go through the monotony of five minutes, ten minutes, or however
long, to procure a piece of data that normally would only take seconds to
create.
The signature waiver solved a problem and
took away the monotony.
What assistance can I provide, then, when it
comes to the actual vote? I know the voting preference. There’s a piece of
blank paper with a box drawn on it. She scribbles an X on the blank sheet. I draw another box and another. More
scribbling. Inside the box. Not outside the box. Job done.
Now it is time to sweat bullets as she fills
out the actual ballot paper. I use blank sheets to hide the candidates she
would never vote for in a million fucking years. In this way, she sees a box on
a sheet. She marks the spot in the legal manner. Her vote is shaky from
arthritis. But it is her vote. Her voting choice is the choice of a person with
mental capacity – and that person is in the past. But that past person informs
the present vote. And she gets the chance to scrawl her choice. With
assistance.
When we go through this process, sometimes
she talks about political parties. So there are remnants floating through the
whole business. She disparages the buggers she’s not voting for. I know I am on
the right track.
That is how I assist. I know what she’d vote
for. Hell, I even know why. We try voting on a blank sheet that I add a box to.
Keep inside the lines. When she’s into the rhythm after a few boxes, we go over
to the real thing. It is nerve-wracking. But it is done legally.
Two points. Separate, yet connected.
One. You cannot vote on someone’s behalf,
even if you have Power of Attorney.
Two. You only write your signature and you
only write your vote. If you can’t do your signature, you obtain an exemption.
Connected. Don’t vote on someone’s
behalf…and don’t write anything else on the paperwork. I mean don’t write POWER OF ATTORNEY on the ballot paper.
Firstly, that power doesn’t apply to voting. Secondly, you’ve just ruined the
vote by spoiling the ballot paper.
But wait. Can you EVER legally vote on someone’s behalf?
Yes. I’ve used a proxy when it turned out that a holiday clashed with some
local elections. How does that work? You appoint a proxy. Get the forms. Fill
those out. The proxy will then vote on your behalf – and must vote as instructed
by you.
Further to that, it is possible that your
proxy won’t be able to reach the polling station on the day. So there’s a
category of postal proxy. The proxy requests a postal vote. It’s even just
barely possible to apply for an emergency ballot as the sands of time run out…
If you can’t be there to vote on the day,
you could do a postal ballot in the run-up to the election. Unless you are away
for so long that you’ll be away when postal voting starts. (This is the 15th
of April, and my ballot paper just arrived for an election on the 6th
of May.)
Without a postal option, you switch to
proxy. The proxy breaks both legs falling down the stairs as the election
approaches, and can’t walk in or even roll up to the venue in a wheelchair. So
the proxy then arranges an emergency postal proxy.
There are loads and loads of ways to ensure
that you get to vote. As a carer. If you can’t be there, there are ways around
all sorts of difficulties.
However, as a carer you are never allowed to
vote on someone else’s behalf. You need to be appointed a proxy for that. As I
type, my mother still manages to make a cross on a piece of paper. Yes, I
provide guidance. Rehearsals. Explanations of why we are doing this. Reminders
of who she voted for in the past.
I cannot use my Power of Attorney. It is
illegal to mark the cross for her. My bold slashing cross would sit in stark
contrast to the spidery scrawl she managed on previous electoral outings. I
don’t vote on her behalf. And I certainly don’t move the pen or pencil in her
hand. I stand, poised, to remove the
pencil if she looks as though she’s going to draw a line all the way to the
edge of the paper and onto the table.
My guidance comes in the form of being
patient, providing the materials, limiting the choice to the choice she
would’ve made, and breathing a sigh of relief when it is over. Power of
Attorney means nothing on the ballot paper.
What if she can’t manage the cross in the
box?
I’d need to be appointed a proxy postal
voter. There’s always a way.
Don’t vote on a dementia sufferer’s behalf.
Power of Attorney does not grant you that responsibility. Don’t add comments to
the ballot paper. Do arrange plenty of time for alternative methods. Get that
signature waiver in place if it is needed. You don’t need to wait until the
last minute before an election to sort this stuff out. Do it between elections.
Normally, I blog monthly. But if I wait
until May to post this blog and you realise you need to take action over the
Scottish election…it’ll be too late for anything but an emergency request. You
barely have enough time as it is.
As a carer, secure your postal ballot. Even
if it is just around the corner. Save yourself the time spent queuing. The
cared-for should arrange a signature waiver. Be prepared in advance. I’ve
written this one for those of you new to the game with an election looming.
Really, I should have written this one up firmly between elections.
In all these years of being a carer, the
cared-for always managed to vote by herself. It takes a bit of organising to
keep things that way, but that’s what carers do. X marks the spot. (Unless you operate under a different voting
arrangement, of course.)
An afterthought occurs to me.
All of this was based on voters already being registered to vote. To clarify…
Power of Attorney may be used to fill out
the voter registration form on someone’s behalf if that person doesn’t have
capacity to deal with the paperwork.
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