Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Fifty November general elections have passed \u201cin the blink of an eye,\u201d said Rita Lese as she was inducted into the state\u2019s Voter Hall of Fame on Friday.<\/p>\n
Lese has a long tradition of going to the polls, which started when she was a little girl, walking there with her parents. It felt like the \u201cgreatest thing\u201d to go behind the curtain of the booth. That history continued as an adult, with her two daughters in tow on Election Day. Living in the same house for the past 50 years, just down the road from their polling place, she\u2019d walk to cast her ballot in rain and sun.<\/p>\n
Lese, 77, was one of three Chester County<\/a> residents \u2014 including her husband, Michael Lese, and Patricia Conroy \u2014 to be recognized this week for voting in 50 consecutive November elections during Chester County\u2019s Board of Elections meeting Friday. <\/p>\n Established in 1986, the Voter Hall of Fame<\/a> was formed to encourage Pennsylvania residents to cast their ballots. In the four decades since, more than 25,000 voters statewide have been inducted. Voters are recognized in each of the counties; Friday\u2019s celebration increases Chester County\u2019s contribution to that tally to 118, officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo there\u2019s no excuse for the rest of us, is what you\u2019re saying?\u201d Josh Maxwell, the chairman of the county\u2019s board of elections, asked Rita Lese.<\/p>\n It appears no. <\/p>\n It was a \u201ca huge commitment and a tremendous accomplishment,\u201d said Stephanie Reid, executive deputy secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State.<\/p>\n \u201cThere had to have been some Election Days when they were ill, or they were busy with pressing work, or commitments with their children, the weather was bad, any other challenge that comes up every day in our lives that would have made going to cast their ballot inconvenient,\u201d she said during the ceremony Friday. \u201cYet they persevered.\u201d<\/p>\n But when Rita Lese thinks about what the suffragettes went through to secure some women\u2019s right to vote in 1920, she can\u2019t imagine not showing up to the polls each year; she thinks about it every year she does. Michael Lese, 78, who describes himself as an avid reader of history, said he feels similarly.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read all of those sacrifices that people made so that we have the right to vote, it just instilled in me the importance of what this means,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The Leses\u2019 civic engagement hasn\u2019t stopped at casting their ballots, either. Rita always wanted to work the polls, but her career as a nurse made that pretty much impossible. In retirement, she thought maybe she\u2019d have the opportunity. But Michael beat her to it: A longtime construction executive, he has spent essentially a second career at the polls. For 25 years, he has served as a clerk, a machine inspector and, for the last three, a judge of elections. He\u2019s brought Rita in as an emergency poll worker when he\u2019s low on poll workers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s never been just about the issues for the Leses, but just the importance of showing up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s what you do,\u201d Michael said in an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s what you do,\u201d Rita echoed. \u201cIt\u2019s a circle on the calendar, and that\u2019s the day you vote.\u201d<\/p>\n After half a century of voting, there are a few elections that stick out. The elections of presidents Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008 felt particularly remarkable, they said. They\u2019ve seen the evolution in voting: \u201cfrom write-ins, to the styluses, to the little circles and different machines.\u201d<\/p>\n With a rise in mail ballots, the crowds haven\u2019t been the same, they said. But as their daughters are avid voters by mail ballots, they hope that participation hasn\u2019t declined either. (In 2024, 77% of eligible voters cast a ballot in the November election<\/a>, in numbers that have dipped and grown in the last 36 years, according to state data. That year saw some of the highest participation since 1988.) <\/p>\n The Leses joked they\u2019d hopefully go for another 25 years of consecutive elections.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, inductee Patricia Conroy, 79, came to her own civic participation a little differently. Her father, a longtime mailman who raised her and her four siblings basically on his own, \u201ccared a whole lot about voting,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n One Election Day, she remembers him coming home, remarking that someone told him they wouldn\u2019t be voting: \u201cJust imagine if everybody felt that way,\u201d she recalls him saying.<\/p>\n That stayed with her. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd so, I\u2019ve been voting, all the time,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Elections have become a significant part of her family\u2019s life. Two of her siblings ran for local office, and her sister is also being inducted to the Voter Hall of Fame in Philadelphia, she said.<\/p>\n A retired realtor, Conroy worked as a judge of elections, a Democratic committeeperson, and on campaigns. She also brought her sons with her to the polls. Both her and her husband \u2014 who met on the aptly patriotic Fourth of July as teenagers in 1966 \u2014 have early November birthdays. She remembers apologizing to him for missing his birthday in 1992 to celebrate President Bill Clinton\u2019s win. (\u201cI told him: You understand, we\u2019re partying,\u201d she said.)<\/p>\n There are other memorable elections: Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a>\u2019s election was a highlight, she said. And some others are notable for not going her way, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s just say we had a lot of laughs and a lot of tears on various election nights,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Democrat who represents Chester County, called the three \u201cexemplars of what model citizens should be.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cElections and candidates have clearly changed over those 50 years,\u201d she said. \u201cOur country has changed, but throughout it, you have made your voice heard.\u201d<\/p>\n For those keen to start their long, storied voting history, voter registration closes Oct. 19.<\/a><\/p>\n This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer\u2019s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com\/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org\/supporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Fifty November general elections have passed \u201cin the blink of an eye,\u201d said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[123200,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-298606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-chester-county-voter-hall-of-fame","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}