Voting Rights and Ageism
Eric Hovde is running for a Senate seat in Wisconsin. He recently told voters that nursing home residents are too old to vote. Hovde complained that nursing residents are too close to death to vote.
“Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.”
Trump supports and endorses Hovde. Disgraceful.
Of course, Hovde is an owner and investor in a long-term care facility cited for a series of safety violations.
Violations of care include not complying with medication storage rules; taking a resident’s personal property (a cell phone); lacking current and required certificates in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation; failing to display a required patients’ rights poster where it was publicly visible; lacking an up-to-date license for the home’s administrator, whose listed qualification also did not meet state minimum requirements; employing people without conducting a criminal background checks; incomplete training records; and hot water in two rooms that was below the minimum required temperature.
Claremont Hacienda was also named in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the daughter of a former resident. No wonder he doesn’t want residents to vote!
Hovde attacked the family’s lawsuit:
They’re all about the politics of personal destruction,” Hovde told Joe Gigante. “To think that they actually manufactured a lawsuit against me so The New York Times could write a hit piece against me, tells you how desperate they are because they have no real issues to talk about.
Of course, the lawsuit was filed way before Hovde announced his campaign for Senate.
The Democratic Party has nothing to do with this lawsuit. This is a lawsuit brought by a family that experienced a tragedy. … If you’re the owner of a nursing care facility, then you have a responsibility to ensure that people get the care that they need.
–Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler.
Repeated investigations and recounts affirmed the results of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, which Joe Biden won by about 20,000 votes. Some of former President Donald Trump’s supporters, however, suggested that nursing home votes were suspect.