Dementia patients were taken to vote

Further shocking details have emerged in relation to claims that elderly residents of some care homes were taken to vote at last month’s North Ayrshire Council Election, without the knowledge of relatives.

Last week the3towns reported concerns expressed by two individuals, one of whom stated, “I couldn’t believe it when my elderly mother said she had voted at the election.  She is too frail to be going out and I laughed when she said she had voted, thinking she was joking.  But she then told me she had been picked up in a car and taken to the Polling Station.”

The concerned man added, “As if that wasn’t bad enough, she said the person who took her to vote had also ‘helped’ her to mark her ballot paper.”

the3towns can now reveal that a staff member from a North Ayrshire care home has confirmed elderly residents – some of whom suffer from dementia – were taken to vote on May 3^rd, after a leading local member of the Labour Party argued with the home manager that ‘memory loss was only short-term’ and therefore the residents ‘would remember they voted Labour’.

the3towns’ source said staff from the home were told to take residents to vote on Polling Day, and in a number of cases had to assist in marking ballot papers as “the old folk didn’t have a clue what they were supposed to do”.

It has been further alleged that, following a decision by care home managers to remove the names of dementia patients from the Electoral Register, the same Labour Party member argued this was ‘an infringement of their human rights’ and insisted the people’s names were put back onto the register. 

On another issue relating to the Council Election, the3towns understands the Electoral Commission has been made aware of concerns regarding the high number of postal ballots in the Hayocks area of Stevenston.  As previously revealed by the3towns, there were 56 postal ballots from the Hayocks area that requested a ‘signature waiver’, meaning there was no way to verify each individual ballot paper had been completed by the person named on the request form.