Having the primary election fall during her birthday week feels like a gift to the woman who has voted 81 years in a row. Lorraine Koons, who will turn 103 next week, says voting is a patriotic duty, especially for primary elections.
“ I think everyone should vote just because it’s your duty to vote when you’re a citizen,” Koons said Friday. “That’s one of the privileges of being a citizen.”
Public figures including Lebanon County election director Sean Drasher, state Sen. Chris Gebhard and state Rep. Russ Diamond, both Republicans representing Lebanon County, joined Koons for a short ceremony to commemorate her civic accomplishment.
Drasher said Koons’ eight-decade voting run is something to be celebrated, especially in a local election cycle when participation rates drop into 20 or 30%.
“This is just the perfect election cycle to contrast the difference between someone who’s that dedicated to their community and people who only phone it in once every four years,” he said.
Though the deadline to register for the May 20 primary is passed, anyone currently registered as a Republican or a Democrat will have the chance to vote for judges, mayors, school directors and judges of elections, among others, at over 9,000 polling places across Pennsylvania.
Legacy of a patriotic woman
Koons was born just two years after the United States ratified the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Women should have always had that right, Koons said.
During the Second World War — before she was old enough to vote — she started working at the Middletown Air Depot to help build and repair B-17 bombers.
“ That’s one of the best things I did with my life,” Koons said.
Her patriotic efforts also extend to convincing people to vote. She said she’s talked quite a few people into registering, including her grandmother back in the 1940s.
“ She just did it for me, I think,” Koons said. “She couldn’t take it anymore. I guess I kept after too much.”
Koons’ legacy and impact continues in the Lebanon community today. A half-dozen people who called themselves Koons’ “church family” joined for the ceremony. Among them, Linda Cikovic said she’s learned to be a better voter from Koons’ example.
“ I’ve learned that it’s important to be patriotic and to study who you’re going to vote for, instead of just going there and pulling a lever or who’s the better looking,” Cikovic said.
Koons said she is proud of her voting history, even if there are one or two votes she regrets.
“ I did make a couple mistakes,” Koons said. “I shouldn’t say, but I did vote for (President Richard) Nixon, sadly.”
But just the once, she said.
In a democracy, voters can change their minds at the next election.
Keeping track of mail-in ballots
These days, Koons votes from the seniors home where she lives, meaning she votes by mail. She’s on the permanent mailing list, but faced a hiccup this year.
While visiting Koons to celebrate her accomplishment, Drasher helped her update her request to receive a mail-in ballot.
Each February, county boards of election send out mailers that require a response from each person on the permanent mail-in balloting list. Per state law, voters must return the mailer with confirmation that they still live at their same address. Without that confirmation or a renewed by-mail voting request, counties cannot send out a ballot.
“ A lot of people don’t like it, but it’s for election security,” Drasher said. “If you don’t respond to that letter, then we can’t send you to the ballot.”
Koons received the letter but did not mark the correct box to confirm her current address. Drasher caught that error, and his diligence means Koons’ voting streak will continue on the May 20 primary.
She said she still has to make up her mind about who to vote for, though.
May 13 is the deadline to request a mail-in ballot. The one-week turnaround before the May 20 primary doesn’t give voters much time to return their ballot by mail, so election directors often suggest voters return ballots to drop boxes or directly to the county election office if they’re cutting it close.
Legacy birthdays and conspiracy theories
Lebanon County has 35 active voters who are over or quite close to 100 years old. Koons is only the third-oldest, behind two voters born in 1921. Like Koons, these voters were born before television was invented and were first of age to vote for local elections during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s third term (the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two terms wasn’t ratified until 1951).
During that time, the process for registering voters and keeping track of who is who has evolved. Counties have moved from thousands upon thousands of physical registration cards to an online system, which itself is in process of a major overhaul.
In voter records, Koons and her fellow centenarians all seem to be born on the first of the month. The reality is that when they registered to vote, the day of birth was not required. As records moved online, the legacy voters were grandfathered in, with the first of the month being used as a stand-in.
For some older voters, only the year of birth was required to register. When their records were digitized, they were assigned Jan. 1 birthdays.
In recent years, conspiracists have searched high and low for evidence to support their unfounded beliefs that elections in the U.S. are rigged. One morsel they have latched onto is that more people seem to be born on Jan. 1 than any other day of the year, and more on the first of each month than any other day.
In reality, the data is a result of longstanding dedication to the franchise by voters like Koons who have long outlived the election laws that governed the franchise when they were first eligible to vote. Others who are listed in voter rolls with Jan. 1 birthdates have taken advantage of the state’s confidential voter option, which defaults to that day; it’s accessible to people who have survived domestic violence, child abuse, stalking, human trafficking or sexual assault.
Read more from our partners, WITF.
