At the age of 101, Ruth Macklen was among the more than 4,000 people who voted in the Logansport city election this year.
Macklen, a Burnettsville native, has been a Logansport resident for more than 70 years.
“I voted off and on my entire life,” Macklen said.
She exercised that right one more time Tuesday when she cast her ballot Tuesday morning at River of Life Christian Church.
The main issues for her are a candidate’s character and habits.
“I don’t like to be around people that drink and things like that,” Macklen said. “I’m a Christian.”
She went on to say, “I like clean people, clean in their habits, clean in thought and spirit.”
Macklen cast her mayoral vote for a person who fits that description.
“My candidate, I think he’s just an A-No. 1 man from what I know, and that’s the kind of people I have in my thoughts.”
She believes a person’s lifestyle is reflective of the decisions he or she would make while in office. Because candidates have varying positions on local issues, Macklen understands the significance of each person exercising their right to choose the leaders of the Logansport community.
“I think it’s very important,” Macklen said. “I want to do that every time I can.”
Of the 9,121 registered voters in Logansport, a total of 4,214, or 46.2 percent, took the opportunity to vote.
For mayoral candidate Teddy Franklin, the high voter turnout this year was unexpected.
“That did surprise me,” he said. “Last week, we projected that we’d have a turnout of about 3,300 in this race, and it ended up over 4,000. So we were surprised and really completely caught off guard by that.”
In the 2003 municipal election, 3,907, or 35.4 percent, of the 11,026 registered voters cast ballots. Of those, just 535, or 4.9 percent, voted absentee. This year, that number rose to 1,151 ballots, or 12.6 percent.
“That showed the effort on the part of both campaigns to encourage the vote,” Franklin said.
Skip Kuker, president of the Logansport-Cass County Economic Development Foundation, attributes voter turnout to people wanting to have their say in who runs local government.
“The election process allows the people to speak,” he said.
Mike Fincher, Logansport’s mayor for the next four years, said the greater turnout worked in his favor.
“I’m so happy the voters came out,” he said. “I asked our party chairman, Matt Meagher, point blank how many votes it would take to win and he said 2,500. We got 2,537, so he knew what he was talking about.”
Kevin Lilly can be reached at (574) 732-5117, or via e-mail at kevin.lilly@pharostribune.com
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<b>Voter turnout greater than 2003 city election</b>
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