Can the mentally incompetent vote ?

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Under the law, only a state court may declare a person mentally incompetent and therefore unable to exercise the right to vote. These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis by a Superior Court judge. It cannot be assumed people under a guardianship due to their mental capacity are ineligible to vote.

http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/faq3.aspx

Theoretically, they may vote; but who is going to explain the issues and candidates to them and take them to the polls?

... or help them fill out the absentee ballot ... without influencing the vote in any way?

Hmm ... this may explain the second terms of both GWB and Mr. Obama...

Of greater concern are the mentally incompetent people who are voted into positions of political power.

So they would take someone mentally incompetent in need of constant care to prison....if they were registered to vote? seems a little harsh...though not sure how someone in that state would manage registering to vote.

I don't see why they should not vote. They have an interest in how a country is run, just like other people. And if they vote against their own interest, too bad. People without disabilities often vote against their own interests as well.

Another problem is where to draw the line, and who will be doing the drawing. Can someone who is not disabled but believes the reptilians are running the world make an informed decision? Not allowing people with crazy beliefs to vote will affect a lot of people.

I dont know if mentally incompetent is a specific termn in english, but if its simple about people that are not allowed to sign contracts on their own, so being declared as mentally incompetent, doesnt have to meen that this person is complete insane. So when my grandaunt got older and got weird, my parents also declared her to be mentally incompetent. It didnt mean that she was totally crazy or whatever, so 95% of the day she could do just fine and sometimes, whyever, memories or her brain refused to work for some minutes or a hour and she did something completely weird. So when she signed again some contract for internet ISDN (hightech around that time) when she didnt even have a computer, my parents declared her to be mentally incompetent, simply because if she signed a contract from now on, it was not guilty if my parents or her "mentally ill person carer" didnt subscribe it either. So she could go on as she was used, but if my parents found out that some company tried to trick her, they simply could undo the contract. But the gross of the time she was mentally functioning, still able to live on her own with some support from us and so on. So I wouldnt know, why she should have been forbidden to vote, only because of being weird 5% of her time.

So it later became worse, but around that time you could said that she didnt know about what she was voting about, she also didnt realize that there was a vote, so then she didnt vote anymore anyway.

I thought that specially around this forum, more people would understand on their own, that being mentally ill or incompetent isnt linked automatically with being complete GAGA and painting pictures with your poo. ^^

It's a translation of the Latin phrase "Non Compos Mentis", which is also a legal term in the USA.

I would venture to guess that there are no two jurisdictions in the world where this question can be unambiguously answered in the same way.

In the United Kingdom, a person who has been detained in a mental hospital (or who is unlawfully at large if they would otherwise be detained) is ineligible. But voluntary patients in mental hospitals can. In Canada, the only citizens over age 18 who are not entitled to vote in federal elections are the Chief Electoral Officer, and the Assistant Chief Electoral Officer. The mentally incompetent, prisoners, Senators, even the Governor General are all entitled to vote. In the United States, there are at least 51 sets of electoral laws, so it is probably impossible to set any clear rule.

Not to mention that whoever is in charge might decide crazy beliefs are any beliefs disagreeing too much with their own.

Yes, they can vote. Whether they should is an interesting question but competency is hard to define. Some states use to have literacy tests but they were used to stop black people from voting. The idea of a civics test to register to vote like those given to those seeking to become citizens isn't a terrible idea in my opinion but that would probably wipe out more than half the voter rolls. Would we be better off tho?

The topic is 'whether or not to allow them on the voting rolls.

Not about throwing anyone in jail.


An underage middle school kid can walk to polling place and try to vote.No one is going to throw the kid in jail. They just wont give the child a ballot because the child wont be listed as a registered voter in the precinct (even if his parents and older siblings are) because they would not have been registered as a voter. Not registered as a voter because they dont register underage peoplel

But as someone above said- it hardly matters. If you're so incompetent that you're in an institution your not going to bother to register nor to vote anyway. So the truly mentally incompetent are probably not very well represented by votes anyway.


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I've seen registration drives and van rides for people in nursing homes and group homes. A lot get signed up for absentee ballots as well. I have mixed feelings about it because some may legitimately want to vote and have as good of an understanding of who/what they're voting for as anyone else but there are others that are being taken advantage of by outside groups.

I don't see why not, since most of our politicians don't appear to be mentally competent.

That's another motivation for me to not get sectioned if I can avoid it.

Can the mentally incompetent vote?
Well, you know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words......


I rest my case.

Can the mentally incompetent vote?

Well, George W. Bush was elected president twice