Voting from Assisted Living

My second cousin Deb with her grandmother,
Allene Winkfield Pera, now 105 years old.

 "Come hell or high water, I'm going to vote," says Annamarie Eggert, who is 94 years old and in precarious health.

For my friend Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, her two dying wishes were returning home from the hospital and making sure her mail-in ballot got mailed.  As soon as mail-in ballots were available, her caregiver with power of attorney drove to Morristown, New Jersey, picked up the ballot, voted it, and returned to report to Virginia that her votes were cast.  Virginia smiled with relief and died the next day, four months before her 89th birthday.

I'm not sure whether my family's oldest member, Allene Winkfield Pera (at right) will be able to vote this year.  She recently turned 105 and lives in Durango in an assisted living facility.  Covid-19 restrictions make it harder for her daughter to get her a mail-in ballot and return it.

Thank you to Katie Hafner of the New York Times for her report, "These Americans Are Determined to Cast a Last Ballot before Dying."  She writes,

In this most contentious of elections, in which the very act of voting has come under fierce national debate, the determination of many very old, ill and infirm Americans to cast what could be their last vote is profound.  

Though aware that they might not live long enough to be affected by the results, they say they are voting for children, grandchildren and their future — a final heartfelt, empowering act as American citizens.

Two days ago Eggert filled out her ballot for Joe Biden and for Sara Gideon, the Democratic nominee running against Senator Susan Collins.  A friend drove her to the city hall of York, Maine, to place her vote into the ballot drop box.

Hafner also spoke with Harriet Fefernan, born in 1920, the year women first won the right to vote. She cast her first presidential vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt.  

Kent Neff, 81, in Sisters, Oregon, said, "If I were going to die next week, voting would still be very high on my list."  Judy Welles, a retired pastor in Portland with terminal cancer, took time to write 15 postcards to voters in Pennsylvania, her former home.

“I’m not afraid to play the death card," she told Hafner.  "If that’s going to impress somebody into voting, that would be great.”