They were alive when Harry Truman was president. What these seniors are saying about voting and Election Day.
At 101, Sandy Horwitz has participated in 80 general elections and 21 presidential elections. He cast his first vote in 1944 for Franklin D. Roosevelt using an absentee ballot. "It does make a difference who you vote for, but I think it's important that we all fulfill our obligation as Americans and vote in the various elections," he told WKYC. "I think that everybody should vote that can vote. And they have so many ways that you can vote and not leave your house, and I think that people should take advantage of it."
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. citizens age 65 and older turned out to vote in the 2020 presidential election — more than any other age group — meaning Horwitz's peers agree with him on the importance of making their voices heard at the ballot box. From first-time voters to a centenarian thrilled to vote for her second Black presidential candidate, here's what older Americans who've lived through history are talking about on Election Day.
‘Get your butts out and vote.’
Horwitz, who served as a radio operator during World War II, says he has never missed an election. He cast his first-ever presidential vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now, Horwitz wants others to “get out and vote” too. “That’s a great privilege we have in America,” he tells WTVG. “If you don’t get your butts out and vote, then there’s just bad people.”
‘If I could do it, other people who can’t read and write can do it, too.’
Last month, a few days before turning 82, Georgia native Betty Cartledge voted for the first time.
“She said she had thought about it many times, but because she couldn’t read or write, she didn’t think her vote would count,” Wanda Moore, Cartledge’s niece, tells the Washington Post.
Moore helped Cartledge register to vote and accompanied her to an early voting station in Covington, Ga., where she read the voting information aloud to her, including the names on the ballots.
“It was amazing,” Cartledge says, adding: “If I could do it, other people who can’t read and write can do it, too. Now I’m not ashamed of it.”
Cartledge says she was sorry she had waited so long to vote and wishes she had done it before now. “It doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are. You need to get out there and speak your mind,” she says. “Your vote counts just as much as everybody else’s does.”
‘She was very excited when she came to the United States and voted her first time.’
WTAE reports that 100-year-old Emma Alper was born in Belarus, fled the Nazis when she was 16 years old and lived through the USSR regime until the fall of the Berlin Wall. She moved to Pittsburgh when she was 70 years old, and since becoming a U.S. citizen, has participated in eight presidential elections.
In remarks translated by her son, Alper tells WTAE that though the U.S. “is changed” since she moved here three decades ago, she is proud to be voting for Donald Trump on Nov. 5.
“In the country where she is from, we didn't have a vote,” Alper’s son says. “We didn't have a democracy. We didn't have a free voice or free speech. So for her, she was very excited when she came to the United States and voted her first time."
‘They need to vote … so they could have a better place for their children.’
Just days before turning 100, Kizida Pankey cast her ballot for Kamala Harris in Charlotte, N.C.
Pankey tells WBTV she’s thrilled to have voted for two Black presidential candidates in her lifetime, saying she never thought “we would have a Black president at all the way things were going.”
The centenarian, who has been voting since 1947, has been encouraging her family and friends to make their voices heard at the polls and tells WBTV she has a message for people who might be thinking of sitting out this election: “I would tell them they need to vote,” Pankey says. “So they could have a better place for their children.”
‘We have seen what President Trump can do and how our country was when he was in office.’
Don Young, an 87-year-old former Bethlehem, Pa., steel plant worker., has been married to his wife, Barbara, for more than 20 years, Sky News reports. But while they both identify as Republicans, they have very different views about Trump and whether he should be reelected.
“I actually believe we have seen what President Trump can do and how our country was when he was in office," Barbara says. "He is the future for America.”
Don disagrees. "I think he's going to run America into the ground because he does not observe any of the democratic norms that his predecessors have," Don says. "He didn't observe them when he was in office. And so that's just a window on what will happen in this coming term."
Though the couple believes that their marriage can survive regardless of the election outcome, they both say they’re eager for the 2024 election to be over.
‘I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris.’
Former President Jimmy Carter, the oldest living U.S. president, voted via mail-in ballot last month for fellow Democrat Harris, his family confirmed.
The Georgia native celebrated his 100th birthday on Oct. 1, defying expectations since he entered hospice over a year and a half ago. When Carter’s son, Chip Carter, asked if he was trying to make it to the landmark birthday, the former president reportedly replied: “I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris.”
During a rally in Cobb County, Ga., on Sunday, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz joked that if he and Harris win the state by one vote, “it will be Jimmy Carter’s vote that did it.”
‘I kind of thought it was important, but I just didn’t have nobody to push me to do that.’
Elmore Kelly, a 78-year-old resident of Clayton County, Ga., recently voted for president for the first time ever, WSB-TV reports.
Donya Sartor, the mayor of Jonesboro, Ga., spent years trying to get Kelly to register to vote and says that “it took some time and convincing.”
Kelly can’t read or write and says he had been too busy providing for his family by working on farms to get around to voting. “Like a farm boy. I never did get into all that,” Kelly says, adding, “I kind of thought it was important, but I just didn’t have nobody to push me to do that.”