More Than a Million Adults Have Legal Guardians. Seven States Wont Let Them Vote. Mother Jones [Video]

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Last month, the Department of Justice released new guidance reaffirming disabled people’s right to vote, and the ways that their voting rights are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. “For too long,” the release from the department’s Civil Rights Division says, “many people with disabilities have been excluded from this core aspect of citizenship” and “prevented from voting because of prejudicial assumptions about their capabilities.”

That includes many people living under guardianships or conservatorships, in which a person’s civil rights are placed under the control of a guardian, often a family member. There are more than a million people living under guardianship in the United States, which can extend to people living with intellectual disabilities as well as those with mental health disabilities. 

States have different rules on whether people under guardianship can vote, but most fall into the …