Hurricane I

And it wasn’t those little hanging chads, though apparently we still get to blame the old people in Florida. According to this article in today's Washington Post, while convicted felons cannot vote, people with Alzheimer’s or with diagnosed dementia can. And since most people who suffer from dementia are old, and Florida has a disproportionate old people population, we get to blame them. (though I hear that many of them have decided that shoveling snow in New England is better than triple hurricanes)

Of course, the problem now becomes in the solution. Are we going to prevent dementia patients from voting? And if so, how are we going to determine that they are too dementia’d to vote? Quote from the article:

The difficulty is in drawing the line of who is entitled to vote and who is not," said Henderson, a professor of neurology at Stanford University. "Someone who is illiterate can vote. Someone who is intoxicated can vote. . . . It's easy to say people with dementia shouldn't vote, but once you look at the complexity of the issue, the solutions aren't easy.

If someone does introduce a bill to limit voting to those without dementia, I predict a) the race card b) the Southern card (a.k.a. The Redneck Discrimination card) c) the Education Bias card d) the Gay card e) the Political Bias card…and the list goes on and on. Now, these things would be exhaustingly mundane to most people, and they will probably get out of hand. However, this is a problem that is definitely worth talking about. I believe that all citizens should have the right to vote, but I also believe that before voting, those intending to do so have a civic responsibility to research their vote. However, I do not think it’s a good idea to legislate that. It does not need to be tempting to classify those intending to vote for Bush in 2004 because he’s a strong, decisive leader in the War on Terror or because of his strong economic policy as too politically uneducated to vote (or as victims of dementia). Another WaPo quote:

But Adam Butler of the Disability Rights Center in Little Rock said such talk holds people with disabilities to a higher standard than the rest of the population. No tests of mental competence are required to stand for office, and no law prevents "competent" voters from choosing candidates for questionable reasons: "People may vote because they like the way George W. Bush looks or because they like Heinz ketchup."
I’m refraining from all Arkansas/Disability jokes, as well as Bush/Monkey jokes.

P.S. I’ll send you a check for a dollar if you can give me a verifiable story of someone voting while drunk.