Evaluating Voting Competence in Persons with Alzheimer Disease

Table 5

What already known on this topic is
People with dementia are underrepresented at the polls. Many of them are denied the opportunity to vote even when retaining the mental capacity to do so.
Methods that address voting capacity of demented people, such as the Competence Assessment Tool for Voting (CAT-V), have been proposed and tested in the US, but never elsewhere.
Using the CAT-V in patients with Alzheimer Disease (AD), US investigators have shown a robust association between declining voting capacity and increasing dementia severity.
What this study adds
Using a modified version of the CAT-V, we found only a moderate association between declining voting capacity and increasing dementia severity in AD.
The capacity to express a choice is largely preserved even in moderate-stage AD.
Many patients with AD, although no longer capable of understanding the nature and importance of voting, are still able to express a choice. Their right to vote should therefore be respected.