By Andrea Barbe
Erdice Yearley, 81, still gets around fine with the help of her walker, but she’s never been one to be held back from her civic duty. This year’s presidential election will be no different.
“I’ve voted in every election since Eisenhower,” Yearley said. “I don’t plan on stopping now.”
Like many senior voters, Yearley’s health has been on the decline within the last few years, but that’s not deterring her this November.
Yearley, who worked as a gerontology professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln for almost a decade, is exploring different options for voting this year. Typically, she’s gotten in her car and driven to her designated polling station. This year she’s opted for filling out an absentee ballot so she doesn’t have to worry about standing in line for hours.
“It’s just easier for me to not deal with the hassle but still get my voice heard,” Yearley said. “But I’ve been hospitalized a few times recently so it’s nice to know that other options are out there for people like me to vote.”
Cathy Lucas, Yearley’s daughter, was concerned about her mother’s voting options as well as her own.
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“I’m a senior too, and I got a letter in the mail saying that I can now vote by mail,” Lucas said. “I think that’s really improved over time.”
Lucas retired in 2003 after working for the VA hospital in Lincoln before it closed. She was a social worker for 23 years and remembers helping hospital patients with their voting ballots.
“That was my main job…walking around doing the absentee ballot,” Lucas said. “That was part of our job as a social worker. The social workers at nursing homes would do that as part of their job, too. They need to prepare the absentee ballots for those that are interested.”
But she doesn’t remember the absentee ballots being a popular choice for seniors in the VA hospital.
“Sometimes we didn’t have a lot of residents, so, during election season, we’d have somewhere in between 20 to 40 absentee ballots. It wasn’t that much then,” Lucas said. “The number of people who have voted over time has increased now and has been increasing lately. There were probably fewer than 100 residents in our hospital, so only a quarter or so would vote.”
For years now, the state of Nebraska has been trying to make voting more convenient and accessible for seniors.
“Our early voting options are always popular,” said Douglas County Election Commissioner Dave Phipps. “Nebraska law allows for curbside voting so that if a person can’t get inside the building, somebody could go in and let them know that there is someone outside waiting to vote.”
“We would actually take the voting experience to them,” Phipps said. “Not a lot of people take advantage of that, but it’s something that we do offer.”
In Douglas County alone, there are 46,480 registered senior voters, Phipps said. In 2004, 38,740 seniors voted in the primary elections.
"I would say that seniors are probably the highest demographic,” Phipps said. “Nationally, if you look at voting numbers, that crowd comes out in greater numbers. As age groups get younger, the voting percentages tend to drop off. We’re trying to curb that.”
Lucas said major changes still need to be made in senior voting procedures.
“I think they could make sure that every individual in a nursing home, hospital or senior housing center has voted by knocking on their door and letting them know that if they need some help to vote, there is someone available,” Lucas said. “Officials need to help them if they need it. Their votes are just as important as everyone else’s vote.”
