Millions of COVID-hit nursing home residents risk losing their vote

For months, the pandemic has curtailed nursing home residents’ freedom of movement and visits with family and friends. Now, it is threatening their ability to vote.

The 2.2 million residents of U.S. nursing homes and residential care facilities have been among the most vulnerable during the pandemic. But facility lockdowns, combined with COVID-driven revisions of voting procedures, mean that some residents may not get to the ballot box, researchers and election officials say.

It is “a really open question to what extent people in long-term care institutions are going to be able to participate in our election in November,” says Nina Kohn, a law professor at Syracuse University who has studied facility residents’ voting-rights issues. Living in a long-term care facility, however, “in no way restricts your right to vote,” she says. Under federal law, facilities participating in Medicare or Medicaid must honor residents’ rights as citizens.

Safeguarding residents’ voting rights “is of utmost importance,” industry group American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living said in a statement. Providers “will do everything possible to ensure residents can get the information and materials they need to participate in the election, while also staying safe from COVID.”