Woman with severe dementia barred from leaving care home before vote 

A woman with severe dementia and a guardianship order was forced to remain in her care home until she voted.  

The woman’s daughter Nadia* lives abroad but was back in Malta for a couple of days and wished to visit her mother on Saturday at her elderly care home.  

On the day of her visit, the voting process was scheduled to be underway between 7am and 10pm, with no visiting hours. However, Nadia contacted the care home to arrange to collect her mother and have a coffee nearby with her. 

The care home acceded to the arrangement, and on the day Nadia went to the care home to pick up her mother, as communicated earlier. She phoned the care home in advance so that her mother could be moved from her room to the reception for easy pick-up. 

However, while her mother was being moved, a representative from the electoral commission saw her mother and asked her if she wanted to vote. Her mother said yes, and from that moment she was barred from leaving the care home entirely.  

Nadia tried telling the representative that her mother has severe dementia and is not in a position to vote, but the representative insisted that she cannot deprive her mother of the right to vote.

The representative later agreed that another commissioner would come to certify whether her mother is fit to vote, but Nadia was not informed of the outcome and does not know if her mother voted.  

Nadia and her family eventually left the care home without seeing her mother. 

“I don’t think a person with dementia should be treated this way,” Nadia told Times of Malta.

“Seeing her be subjected to something which she cannot understand... she doesn’t even know she has children.” 

Nadia was also concerned that the process was traumatic for her mother, who had to be taken out of the safety of the home’s dementia ward during the voting period. 

“I know of cases where people were told to bring the voting documents of their elderly relatives to the care home, otherwise a police officer would be sent to bring the documents,” she said.  

Nadia also holds reservations as to whether someone like her mother should be issued a voting document.

“I wouldn’t deprive her of her right to vote if it wasn’t a trauma for her. All I care about is her welfare. Her well-being is being affected by all this.” 

The welfare of dementia patients during the voting process has been a longstanding issue. In 2022, an elderly woman who “cannot tell the difference between Kinnie and tea” and was in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 was still taken out of her ward to vote in the election.  

Michael Farrugia, the active ageing minister at the time, said psychiatrists and electoral commission officials had assessed dementia patients on their capability to vote in the prior weeks.  

“The vote belongs to the person and neither their relatives nor staff members can stop them from voting once they are certified as being fit,” he said at the time. 

Ahead of the 2014 MEP elections, the issue cropped up when a dementia patient residing in an elderly home was also asked to vote, despite mixing up political candidates with those of the 1950s.  

According to the Constitution, a person may only be disqualified from voting if they are interdicted or incapacitated for any mental infirmity by a court in Malta or are otherwise determined to be of unsound mind.  

However, concerned family members or carers of persons who are mentally infirm can apply to the Electoral Commission to have their loved one’s name be struck off the electoral register. This would be subject to a unanimous decision by a medical board appointed to review the case.  

Questions have been sent to the Electoral Commission. 

*Nadia’s real name is being withheld to protect her mother’s identity