Assessing Voting Competence and Political Knowledge: Comparing Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injuries and “Average” College Students

Abstract

Abstract

The majority of U.S. states have constitutional language, statutes, or court decisions that if applied as worded, could bar individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) from voting. Here, we investigate the difference between the voting competence and political knowledge of individuals with TBI and that of “average” college students using measures of voting capacity and election-specific political knowledge. We recruited 14 individuals with TBI who are participating in a larger study on the relationship between disability and political participation at Carolinas Medical Center. We compared their responses to healthy controls (HC) (students at a large public university in North Carolina; n=22) on voting competency and political knowledge using the Competency Assessment Tool for Voting (designed by Appelbaum, Bonnie, and Karlawish), as well as measures of 2008 election information and questions drawn from the United States Citizen and Immigration Services citizenship exam. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to compare election-specific knowledge of persons with TBI and HCs. We find that those with TBI scored similarly to the healthy controls on competence to vote and election-specific knowledge. We conclude suffrage laws should not be based on overly broad, general assumptions regarding the cognitive capacity of citizens, but on whether or not they express a desire to vote.