MITCHELLVILLE - No absentee ballot for Fannie Jeffrey.
Despite a recently broken arm and an ensuing fall, despite knee surgery that makes standing in line to vote nearly impossible, despite aches and pains that might keep others in their retirement home on a chilly November morning, Jeffrey, 92, zipped herself into her winter coat and cast her ballot in person yesterday, continuing seven straight decades of going to the polls.
"You want to keep it up, the voting - it's good to go and be a visible part of the community," says Jeffrey, a spirited former social worker whose discerning gaze still penetrates even behind fishbowl glasses. "As long as I can walk, I'll continue to vote."
When the bus from the Collington retirement community pulls up at a Prince George's County polling place at 10:45 a.m., Jeffrey is the first off, carrying a small fold-out chair in case her legs get tired while she casts her ballot. A volunteer serving voters whose last names run "H-O" asks her name, address, then date of birth.
"Eight, eight, 10!" Jeffrey declares.
She is just one of more than 50 elderly voters from Collington - and a broad swath of senior citizens nationwide - who made an extra effort to get to the polls yesterday. If the crowded buses from Collington are any guide, it's no wonder studies show seniors vote at a greater rate than any other age group in American society.
It's easy to understand the statistic that three in five elderly people vote - compared with one in five Americans ages 19 to 21 - when Charles Trammell approaches the shuttle bus. Told there is no more room, he is undaunted.
"That's OK," the 90-year-old tells the driver. "I'll stand."
Plenty of seniors feel this strong sense of civic duty, but for Jeffrey, Election Day is about something else. Born in her family's house in Tuskegee, Ala., she grew up aware of the discrimination that kept her African-American parents from voting.
So to her, the right to vote feels a little like a religion.
"I feel I need to carry out what my parents were not able to do," says Jeffrey, whose family moved to Denver when she was a youngster, in part to escape the racism they endured in the South. "When I became old enough to vote, fortunately I could."
It's not the first thing on her mind when she votes, but it's not too far from it, either - the story about the night riders, white supremacists whose members once rode their horses to her bedroom window to scare her. Her father stood in her bedroom with a gun to make sure she would be safe. She was 4 years old.
When Jeffrey moved as a young woman to New York City, where she studied at Columbia University's Teachers College, she began her life as a voter, registering first as an independent but often voting Democrat. She remembers her favorite votes: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is, to her, simply "Franklin." She proudly recalls voting for "all the Kennedys," a declaration that is met on the shuttle bus with nods of approval from many other seniors who said yesterday that they voted for Robert F. Kennedy's eldest child, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, in the Maryland governor's race.
Jeffrey keeps mum about her own choices this election - "It's my business!" she insists - although in the race for Prince George's county executive, she acknowledges feeling a strong pull toward Prince George's County State's Attorney Jack B. Johnson, a young black Democrat who reminds her of her son, who died a decade ago.
"I want to give young black men every chance that I can," says Jeffrey, whose son, James, was a Peace Corps volunteer who worked in Africa. "I feel like I'm holding up my son because he was very interested in giving young black men opportunities."
A few minutes before 11 a.m., she sets her jaw and makes her way to the voting booth. An informed voter, she makes quick work of the lengthy ballot. "I'm through," she declares.
By noon, the other seniors have finished, and it's time to leave the polling place. Jeffrey gets a passer-by to help her out of her seat. She gathers up her purse, which includes a guide with instructions about using the new voting machines, and boards the bus.
She's tired these days, too tired for her regular tai chi classes at the retirement community, where she has lived since 1991. She felt so run-down during the summer that she canceled her regular trip to Denver, where she usually visits one of her two nieces. After the death of her husband nine years ago, her nieces are her last surviving relatives. Recently, she even stopped volunteering at the National Cathedral in Washington, something she had enjoyed during the many years she has lived in the D.C. area.
Despite the fatigue, though, she vows not to lose her November passion.
"Only when I can no longer act independently will I stop going to the polls," she says, before boarding the motorized scooter that waits for her in the lobby at Collington. "I will vote and I will keep voting, because that is my responsibility."