Mr. Gastwaite’s 115 year old voter

On: November 23, 2020

Tagged: centenarians, early voting, voter

I’m writing in response to Mr. Gastwaite’s claims of a 115 year old Democratic voter here in Chatham:

Congratulations to the oldest voter in Chatham County during the recent
> elections: Mr. Michael Young, who will be 115 years old at the end of this
> year.
> He voted absentee as a Democrat during the 2020 early voting period. As
> there are only two verified 115-year-olds according to wikipedia who live
> in the United States, this should be another opportunity to get Chatham
> County on the map. Democrats also had eight additional voters over 100
> years of age.
> Maybe all of us should change our registrations to Democrat so we can live
> long lives, too.
> Perhaps the local newspaper or other organizations could interview Mr.
> Young and get his thoughts on the recent election and his views on
> longevity.
> Note: all voter information is publicly available at this website:
> https://www.ncsbe.gov/results-data/absentee-data
> Does this give you confidence in the integrity of our recent elections?

Curious, but skeptical, I decided to look into it for myself and downloaded the “current absentee by county file” on the page that he linked to, opened the .csv file for Chatham County and found the voter name he was referring to. I looked at the other Youngs in the list and found another Young at the same address, a woman age 61. Did a Google search for Mr. Young’s full name and our area and didn’t find an obituary. Did a Google search for the other Young (full name included) and found her father’s obituary with her spouse listed as Michael. *(She lost her father in the last few years, so if she somehow sees this, my condolences, especially as the holidays approach.)*

So, either Michael really “robbed the cradle,” so to speak, if at 115 he has a 61 year old wife, or (more plausibly) there is a clerical error that has his birth year entered improperly (1905 instead of 1955, perhaps?). Mr. Young should get in touch to correct the clerical error for the future, but this does not appear to be voter fraud. Just a typo.

As for the other centenarians, I don’t have time to check into the identity of every centenarian in the county, but it is encouraging to see that those who requested an absentee ballot, but ended up voting in person at Early Voting had their mailed ballot spoiled, so only one vote counted per person. (This was the case from what I could see across the age and party spectrum.)

I’m still confident in the integrity of our elections.

-Krista

*Krista Westervelt (she/her)*