As she was walking to line up outside of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections to vote early last week, Anita Blackwell suffered a cardiac arrest. A doctor found her and performed CPR until an ambulance arrived to take Blackwell to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.
Blackwell thought she’d lost her chance to participate in this year’s November election until a doctor visited her room.
The doctor asked Blackwell if she wanted an emergency absentee ballot application, since she had an unexpected health issue.
“I was like, 'Heck yeah,'" Blackwell said. "I went through all of this, then not knowing how long I was going to be in the hospital, and if I was going to be able to vote, it was really a blessing.”
People who unexpectedly end up in the hospital during the week ahead of an election often have their voting plans interrupted. But a newly expanded program at MetroHealth allows registered voters to cast emergency absentee ballots right from their hospital bed.
A team of resident doctors led by Dr. Kathryn Linder, an internal medicine resident, are making absentee ballots more accessible.
MetroHealth had previously given emergency absentee ballot applications to those who asked and advertised the program on meal trays, but Linder and her team now proactively offer the application to all eligible patients.
The doctors identify recently admitted patients and go room to room to ask if patients are registered to vote, and if they want to vote absentee. They often work on their days off or after work hours to make sure every patient is reached.
“We’re offering the service to these patients right at the bedside and explaining and answering their questions," Linder said. "Kind of having that personal touch, I think, really makes a difference."
After an application is filled out, a Board of Elections official brings an absentee ballot to the patient’s bedside and collects it once it’s complete.
As of Sunday, Linder said 95 patients had requested absentee ballots, and her goal is to help at least 55 more by the end of Election Day.
J. Collin Marozzi, deputy policy director for ACLU of Ohio, said he expects more people to use emergency absentee ballots now that Ohio has moved its absentee deadline from three days prior to Election Day to a week before.
But a large number of hospital patients can't qualify for an emergency absentee ballot if they've been in the hospital for an extended amount of time.
"It seems kind of ridiculous, frankly, that this group of people who would be admitted for longer term care at a local hospital is kind of lost in the shuffle," Marozzi said.
