Aged care residents enrolled to vote
Help is available for aged care residents enrolled to vote when their minds are still strong but their bodies are frail.
Aged care residents enrolled to vote are expected to cast their votes at the Federal election.
To simplify life, temporary mobile polling stations visit many aged care facilities, retirement villages and seniors lifestyle communities to assist aged care residents enrolled to vote.
These visiting mobile polling places might be open for only one hour in the fortnight before Election Day; just long enough for the residents of that aged care facility to vote early. The visiting mobile polling station could be open longer, maybe for a whole morning, at a retirement village that includes both an aged care facility and independent living units.
Thus aged care residents enrolled to vote could cast their votes early at their aged care facility, nursing home or supported residence.
Hint: before you take granny to out to a polling place on Election Day check that she has not already voted early when the temporary mobile polling place visited her aged care home or retirement village.
Ask about early voting at the aged care facility: the manager on-site would know if and when the mobile polling station visits.
What about vision impaired aged care residents enrolled to vote?
The polling place staff are permitted to help our blind and vision impaired electors to record their votes. Blind and vision impaired electors could have a family member or friend, help with the paper handling at the polling station.
What about demented aged care residents enrolled to vote?
Sadly some aged care residents enrolled to vote have seriously declined in mind even when their bodies are still strong. Thus some aged care residents enrolled to vote have such advanced dementia that they no longer know what voting is about.
The Australian Electoral Commission, AEC, has a formal process for removing names from the electoral roll. The process is detailed to protect us from being dropped off the roll when we are here and healthy.
You can start the process for having an aged care resident or any demented family member, taken off the electoral roll
Step 1 – Ask the aged care resident’s medical doctor for a letter stating that the resident is no longer capable of making sensible decisions. You are asking for the medical practitioner to certify that your relative or close friend, ‘is incapable of understanding the nature and significance of enrolment and voting because of unsound mind’.
Step 2 – Contact Australian Electoral Commission, AEC, to request that your relative or close friend, be removed from the electoral roll.
You need to obtain a ‘claim that an elector should not be on the electoral roll’ form from the AEC. Contact the AEC at http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Contact_the_AEC/index.htm
Step 3 – Send the completed ‘claim that an elector should not be on the electoral roll’ form together with the doctor’s letter to the AEC.
What about deceased aged care residents enrolled to vote ?
If the death occurred in Australia, the State, or Territory, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages will inform the AEC and the deceased person’s name will be removed from the electoral roll.
But if an elector dies outside of Australia then a family member or close friend, could contact the AEC to have the name removed from the electoral roll. Contact the AEC at http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Contact_the_AEC/index.htm