These Voters Haven’t Missed an Election in at Least 50 Years
In 1963, Leola Hubbard voted for the first time. She was 21, and she sent her absentee ballot home from college in Georgia to be counted in Montgomery County, Pa.
On Tuesday, Ms. Hubbard voted again in Montgomery County, in the Pennsylvania primary. She is now 81, and to her knowledge, she has not missed voting in an election — primary or general — in the 60 years in between.
Ms. Hubbard and 15 others with comparably impressive voting records are the newest members of the Voter Hall of Fame in the county, a tradition that rewards outstanding civic engagement among people who have voted in at least 50 consecutive general elections.
In a year when all attention seems to be on the presidential election in November, and when even the presidential primaries were effectively over before many states had voted, Ms. Hubbard and others like her stand out for what one county commissioner called an “unshakable faith in our democratic process” that goes far beyond the typical American.
Ms. Hubbard, who is African American, cast her first ballot before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned practices aimed at restricting Black Americans from voting, like poll taxes and literacy tests. Her racial identity and participation in the civil rights movement are both part of her motivation for maintaining her stellar voting record, she said.
“I know how strenuously people fought for the right,” she said. “I just felt that I owed it to all of those people who had put so much effort into getting us the right to vote.”