How will residents of long-term care facilities vote amid a pandemic? Advocates have concerns
Options for voting are plentiful for a majority of Pennsylvanians, but not necessarily for residents of long-term care facilities isolated during the coronavirus pandemic.
Most of the Keystone State’s more than 9 million registered voters can vote in-person before or the day of Election Day, by absentee ballot, mail-in ballot or at a secure drop box.
Some of those options, however, may exacerbate concerns for some of Pennsylvania’s more than 127,000 long-term care facility residents.
Most are elderly and at higher risk of dying of COVID-19. Even the in-person option is more burdensome than previous years.
There will be no polling locations at nursing homes in Centre County when the calendar flips to Nov. 3. County Commissioner Mike Pipe acknowledged those locations likely won’t come back “for some time” because of safety concerns.
But those in long-term care facilities also check an important box for high voter turnout.
Voters aged 65 and older have progressed from comprising the smallest percentage of voters in 1980 — 16.8% — to the second-largest percentage in 2016 at 24.2%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Long-term care residents have been affected by COVID-19 and voting procedures “perhaps more than any other demographic or population across the country,” Pennsylvania Health Care Association President and CEO Zach Shamberg said.
“Being admitted into a nursing home or moving into a personal care home or an assisted living community doesn’t mean that a resident must forfeit their involvement in the political process,” Shamberg said.
But Centre Crest Therapeutic Recreation Director Bobbie Salvaterra found the worry about the potential disenfranchisement of Pennsylvania’s elderly to be unmerited.
Centre Crest requested absentee ballots for residents, as it does every election.
“We vote the same way during a pandemic that we do when there’s not a pandemic,” Salvaterra said. “... Our department and our facility doesn’t feel the change. We are operating in the same method that we were the last voting cycle.”
The Village, in an effort to make in-person voting more accessible for those in independent living, plan to transport residents to the polls on a bus every 45 minutes, Resident Services Director Kim McGinnis said.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wrote in an October memo that a resident’s right to vote “must not be impeded in any way by the nursing home and its facility staff.”
The reason is simple.
Nursing homes are required by federal law to facilitate residents’ rights, including voting. That doesn’t change even if external assistance is not available, like it traditionally has been.
Voters with a disability may designate an agent to return their ballot, while the state’s Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman follows up with facilities about voting complaints from residents.
“We do want to ensure that everyone can exercise their right to vote,” AARP Pennsylvania President Joanne Grossi said. “... Because there have been changes now to what’s going to be allowed, it is a concern to us to make sure that every one of those 125,000 Pennsylvanians get to exercise their right to vote.”