Local TV host Peppi Azzopardi has raised concerns after he discovered his elderly mother who suffers with dementia was taken to a polling booth to vote during the early voting rounds.
Posting to Facebook, the host said that his mother, who is a St Vincent de Paule patient suffered from dementia and could not even recognise her own son.
He said that in every matter which concerns her, Peppi and the rest of his family are always informed about the tiniest of things. However, he revealed that she was taken out of her ward to vote without her family’s consent.
‘How could have done this without us being informed? Can I know what’s going on?’ The post resulted in similar cases being revealed through comments, highlighting a problem of elderly patients who are entitled to a voting document being escorted out of their wards to put in their ballot.
The electoral commission allows families to request the halting of an incapacitated relative’s involvement in the voting process and sign them off the electoral register. However, in cases where patients are still issued a voting document, hospital staff are obliged by the Commission to allow the patients their democratic right to vote.
Voting documents are not held by patients but instead collected by the hospital a day earlier from the Commission.
Azzopardi’s post was replied to by one SVDP staff member, who said that he was present in the hospital wards during the voting. He said that the staff there worked during previous general elections and know their job well. ‘There was no form of pressure on people to vote. But you cannot deny people their right to vote. Rest assured that she was in good hands.’
He also insisted that without a court application for her incapacitation, any patient would have had their voting document issued, giving them voting rights. However, a dementia sufferer would not have been allowed to vote anyway, he said.
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