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Chile has not held a plebiscite for 31 years. The one of next October 25, not only has generated a lot of interest, it also constitutes a milestone in terms of citizen participation: it is the third after 1988 (in 1989 one was carried out where 54 reforms to the 1980 Constitution were approved).
But can all people vote? What happens to those who have some type of dementia? In legal terms, this group of the population does not have an impediment to vote, explains the director of the Memory Unit of Hospital Salvador, academic of the University of Chile and deputy director of the Center for Gerociencia, Mental Health and Metabolism GERO, Andrea Slachevsky.
The current constitution regulates the right to vote with the “principle of universal suffrage, where if there is no good reason to exclude someone, people have the right to vote ”, explained lawyer Pablo Marshal, at the meeting“ Dialogue on the right to vote for people with dementia ”, held on October 1, by the Transdisciplinary Network on Aging of the University of Chile, the Center for Gerociencia, Mental Health and Metabolism GERO, the Society of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery of Chile (SONEPSYN), the Memory and Neuropsychiatry Clinic, and the Medical College of Santiago .
Through social networks GERO spread a video on the occasion of the meeting in which the caregiver Paulina Urrutia talk to Augusto Góngora, journalist diagnosed with alzheimer on the plebiscite in our country.
“Do you think you have the right to exercise your vote?”, Paulina consults Augusto in the recording. To that he responds: “Yes, why not? I say yes, of course ”. Then she He asks if you would like to vote. Augusto responds: “To vote on that? But of course”.
“The ritual of going in the morning, of being part of the queue, of talking, that cannot be taken away from a citizen of this country who built democracy like other people that we have today, ”Urrutia stressed at the meeting.
And Góngora’s testimony is not the only one. GERO along with other organizations consulted other people with dementia about the plebiscite and in all those testimonies reflects the interest of being part of that citizen instance.
“It is important to be able to decide who are the next authorities that will govern us in our country”, indicates one of them. They also point out that “it is a citizen’s right and everyone has the right to participate at this time. I can choose. I’m going to vote ”.
They also emphasize that they recognize their right. “I think it is a right that every citizen has to realize. I think they are right to do it because there are many types of dementia, and among them I have one that is vascular, and I feel fully aware of doing it ”. “I want to vote anyway,” they say.
In Chile, near 200 thousand people are diagnosed with some type of dementia. The current Constitution establishes in its Article 16, paragraph 1, which among other reasons the right to vote is suspended “by interdiction in case of insanity.” However, says Marshal, “the term dementia used by the constitution is nineteenth-century, it is not a technical term that we use today to identify cognitive decline.”
The Declaration of interdiction, regulated by Law No. 19,954, is a formal act that is carried out in a court of law. But Even before the ban is declared, Marshal said, all people continue to maintain their right to vote. “This means that even if a person is affected by dementia or any other mental illness that affects their decision-making capacity, that person continues to be the holder of the right to vote.”
In electoral terms, the interdiction is materialized according to the Constitutional Organic Law on the electoral registration system and electoral service (No. 18,556), which in article 18 states that “within the first five days of each month, the letter judges will communicate to the Electoral Service the names of the people who have been declared in interdiction due to insanity by final judgment, in the previous month, indicating the necessary background information for its full identification ”.
But in Chile, Slachevsky says, “the interdiction has no nuances: either it is an injunction for everything or for nothing ”. And there is no single form of dementia, Explain. For example, “some will affect memory more, others more language.”
They can affect both people older and younger than 60 years. “It is true that aging is a great risk factor for dementias, but they are not a inevitable consequence of it”Clarifies Slachevsky.
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The act of voting Slachevsky highlights “it has a social value, it makes us citizens. So when we prohibit a person from voting because we determine that they do not have the skills, we are removing them from the public space ”.
How to ensure the participation of all people with cognitive disorders one way or another, says the researcher, it should be the focus of public discussion on the subject.
It is understood that there is a time in cognitive disorders when people do not understand what voting is, notes Slachevsky, “Then the ideal is for it to be a assisted vote”.
However, what is currently established is that when a person is declared interdicted, he loses the right to vote. The problem, he says, is that interdictions are often made, for example, due to problems managing assets or to collect pensions, “but once the person is declared an injunction, the law has no nuance, the person loses all rights “.
That is why it is necessary to reformulate the law. “It is discriminatory and also does not reflect what the decision-making capacity is like. It is not that from one day to the next the person ceases to have the ability to make decisions for everything, but rather that it is necessary to evaluate in a specific domain. If a person requires custody or tutelage to manage their assets, caution should be exercised in that domain, but that this is not extended to everything, ”Slachevsky clarifies.
If people with cognitive disorders are forbidden to vote, they are deprived of their citizenship status, “for that reason we must ensure that everyone who wants to vote, ensure that right”, He insists.
That any person who wants to vote can continue to participate, is what the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities indicates, by assisted voting or “why not express in advance for another person to represent their vote if they are going to have a cognitive disorder and delegate your vote, but at no time deprive him of that right “
“It is not good to think that only those who do not have cognitive disorders can vote, because we are rational. Reason influences the vote, but also a series of affective factors. Beyond cognitive abilities, voting the vote is an important moment in the lives of all citizens and a good society is one that assures all people to continue participating. And for that, because it is necessary to change the legislation, we cannot continue with an outdated interdiction law, which at the moment in which a person is declared an interdiction removes him from the social space, ”Slachevsky emphasizes.
