Donald Trump Doesn't Want Nursing Home Residents To Vote
He's trying to intimidate election officials, and people who run and oversee long-term care facilities, out of helping infirm voters cast their ballots. And that's only the beginning.
Keep your eye on nursing homes. Maybe particularly in Wisconsin and Texas, but really everywhere.
On Monday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services quietly rescinded standing guidance—first issued in October 2020, then renewed ahead of the 2024 election—reminding nursing-home owners that their residents have the right to vote “without interference, coercion, discrimination, or reprisal” from their long-term care facilities, and that they “are required to support residents in the exercise of their right to vote, such as assisting with absentee or mail-in voting or transporting residents to polling locations or ballot drop-boxes in a safe manner.”
Why would the Trump administration withdraw a memo that a) restates federal law protecting vulnerable patients (most of whom are senior citizens) from politically motivated manipulation, and b) suggests best practices for ensuring residents who want to vote can register and cast ballots?
Well, there are facially obvious reasons: Donald Trump doesn’t want to help anyone vote unless he knows how they intend to vote; he suspects the only nursing-home owners who’d coerce nursing-home residents, or discriminate and retaliate against them over their voting decisions, would be his own supporters; and that this kind of federal support for ensuring nursing-home residents can vote likely redounds to the benefit of Democrats.
But if you remember the aftermath of the 2020 election, and dig a little deeper, you’ll find another, related motive at work. The administration rooted its decision to withdraw the memorandum in lies about the 2020 election, and Trump’s appointees are now citing those lies as a basis for intimidation. In this case, they want election officials and social workers and others who help nursing-home residents vote to fear that their lives will be ruined, and they might be imprisoned, for even registering these vulnerable citizens.
But the threat is generalizable: If you’re in the business of helping anyone vote, for any reason, the federal government wants you to be scared.
When I was alerted to the rescinded guidance, it rang a bell, because I recalled this episode from several years ago, when Trump suggested high 2020 turnout among nursing-home residents in Wisconsin was suggestive of fraud.
In reality, nursing-home turnout in 2020 was basically in line with overall turnout, but Trump fixated on it anyhow, because the state’s election commission changed the rules that year in order to send absentee ballots to nursing-home residents who wanted to vote. The 2020 election unfolded at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, before vaccines were available, and nursing-home residents were particularly vulnerable. Wisconsin would normally send special voting deputies to nursing homes to allow residents to cast ballots “in person” at their facilities, but COVID-19 made that protocol excessively risky.
When Trump lost, he folded this change in process into his larger lie about the theft of the election. And then he just never stopped lying.
Six years later, this lie (or sub-lie) helps form the basis for withdrawing the 2020 and 2024 guidance.
In a new memorandum, replacing the withdrawn ones, CMS warns that efforts to help nursing-home residents vote, “should not violate federal or state voting laws.”
Unfortunately, in recent years, we have become aware of several allegations of instances in which resident rights were unlawfully violated.
In Texas a social worker was charged with 134 felony counts involving election fraud for unlawfully registering residents of the Mexia State Supported Living Center. Texas Attorney General Paxton said, “Registering citizens to vote or to obtain mail ballots without their consent is illegal. It is particularly offensive when individuals purport to be champions for disability rights, when in reality they are abusing our most vulnerable citizens in order to gain access to their ballots and amplify their own political voice.”
In Wisconsin, Sheriff Christopher Schmaling and Sgt. Michael Luell investigated a case in which they alleged that eight men and women whose mental capacities had diminished due to age or disease sent mail-in ballots from Ridgewood Care Center.
Set aside the irony that Ken Paxton stands credibly accused of fraudulent voting. Note the qualifiers CMS uses: “charged,” “investigated,” and “alleged.”
Why not “convicted”? Why “allegations of instances” instead of just “instances”?
Because nobody’s rights were unlawfully violated in these “instances,” nor did they result in any fraudulent voting. In Texas, Paxton scapegoated a social worker named Kelly Brunner, who made technical errors in determining which nursing-home residents at the State Supported Living Center in Mexia were eligible to vote, and how to register them. Election officials caught the errors, and nobody was improperly registered, nor did any resident cast an invalid ballot. But Paxton was in the business of propounding lies about election fraud on Trump’s behalf. He charged her with 134 felonies, and tried to make her infamous. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, blasted her case out to a million followers on Twitter. They ultimately bullied her into a plea deal that sentenced her only to probation, but nevertheless ruined her life.
And the Wisconsin allegations? Trump-loyal election deniers hoped they’d lead to the prosecution and imprisonment of members of the state’s election commission.
But every prosecutor with jurisdiction rejected them. “Several claims have been raised surrounding potential fraud in the balloting process. There does not appear to be any support for such propositions,” wrote Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Matthew Westphal. “Claims have been made that residents who did not request a ballot voted because someone requested a ballot on their behalf and voted on their behalf. There has been no evidence submitted that any of the individuals who received ballots did not request them.”
What’s the damage here?
A CMS spokesperson did not respond to written questions or a request for comment.
It’s probably safe to assume that most people who work as state election officials, or overseeing nursing homes, won’t be deterred from helping residents vote, as required by law. (A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Election Commission did not respond to a request for comment.)
But it’s also fair to say that if it reaches nursing homes, Trump’s desperation to suppress turnout in 2026 is unbounded.
Citing these incidents—which involved no intentional wrongdoing, and resulted in no fraudulent votes—in guidance to state officials who oversee nursing homes sends a clear message: We will be watching. If you, or social workers, or nursing-home employees try to help nursing-home residents vote, we will scrutinize every action, and if we have even a thin basis to investigate criminally, we will do so.
That’s a message Trump wants everyone doing election administration work to hear. Nobody would mistake intimidating nursing-home workers for savvy politics; but if the goal is to menace, it makes perfect sense: You’re not safe from harassment even if you do god’s work.
If people who can forcefully push back on these intimidation tactics don’t do so immediately (it should’ve started long ago) it’s only going to get more blatant and a lot more far reaching over the next couple of months.
This regime fully believes they can do whatever they want, and why not because up til now the answer to the ‘who’s gonna stop them’ question has been no one for the most part. The courts may help a bit in some cases but there isn’t a lot of time left for lawsuits to make their way through the system.
"the goal is to menace, it makes perfect sense: You’re not safe from harassment even if you do god’s work" Separate but related, earlier this week Medicaid funding was rescinded from recipients in California and Minnesota, claims of fraud, but let's face it these two state have decided trump and stood up for their citizens rights.