...I was not prepared for a conversation I had at Thanksgiving dinner with my brother-in-law, Henry, who has lived most of his life in a home for the mentally disabled and although now in his 40s, has the intelligence level of a 6-year-old.







“What do you mean?”



“I voted for him for president and now he’s saving me.”



I was taken aback by these words, since Henry had no idea who Obama was, or what a president might be, and would be unable to fill out a registration form let alone get to the polling place by himself.



So I asked him how he knew that and how he had registered and cast his vote. In halting, impeded speech he told me that the people who take care of him at the home filled out “the papers” to register him to vote, told him how Obama cared for him, even taught him the Obama chants, and then took him to the polling place to vote. They did the same for all of the mentally disabled patients in their care, approximately 60 in all.





The father, Cecil Pearson, said his daughter - who is 40 but has the "mentality ... of a 7-year-old" - was "brainwashed the night before" and then taken to a Roanoke Rapids polling site on Friday to vote. He said his daughter told him what happened when he picked her up on Sunday.



"They brought her a piece of paper and they indicated which block to check," Pearson [said,] "She voted for Barack Obama and was coaxed into doing that." He claimed "more than four" people were brought to the site.

Jimmy Green's stepdaughter had never voted before. The 57-year-old is mentally disabled, and Green said she doesn't understand the concept of casting a ballot.



But this week, she called her parents to say she had voted for President Obama. The care home in Fayetteville where she lives registered its residents to vote and drove them to the polls, Green said...



"My concern is that somebody told her who to vote for," he said. "She didn't even know there's two different parties."