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An elderly woman quarantined with a MRSA infection voted
YOUNGSTOWN
Though a majority of people eligible to vote in the May primary won’t bother casting ballots, an elderly woman quarantined with a MRSA infection at a nursing home insisted on voting in the city’s 4th Ward council race.
“Never before had that happened in the 27 years I’ve been doing this,” Joyce Kale-Pesta, director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, said Thursday. “This was a very rare case for us.”
The woman’s vote will count, but it took a little work to accomplish that.
The Mayo Clinic describes MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) as a contagious infection caused by a strain of staph bacteria that is resistant to the antibiotics commonly used to treat ordinary staph infections. It is prevalent in nursing homes, according to the clinic’s website.
Board workers were at a West Side nursing home earlier this week to provide ballots to those who want to vote early when the woman with MRSA requested one, Kale-Pesta said.
The woman voted — the only race on her ballot is the Democratic primary for 4th Ward council — and a nurse with her put the paper ballot in a plastic biohazard envelope sealed at the top, and gave it to election workers, Kale-Pesta said.
Elections officials asked the county health department to open it, but health officials declined, Kale-Pesta said.
But Dr. Joseph Ohr, the county’s deputy coroner and forensic pathologist, agreed to open the ballot.
The elections board and coroner’s office are both located in the county-owned Oakhill Renaissance Place on the city’s South Side.
Kale-Pesta said after Dr. Ohr opened the ballot and read the vote to her, she made a duplicate ballot, and Ohr destroyed the original.
Normally, the board retains the original ballot when a duplicate is made, but there wasn’t anything that could be done in this case, Kale-Pesta said. She said she contacted the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, who said there wasn’t a problem with the process in this case.
Meanwhile, early voting is going very slowly in Mahoning County, Kale-Pesta said.
Early voting started Tuesday and as of the end of Thursday, less than 20 people came to the board to vote early.
The board received about 1,000 requests for ballots to be cast by mail as of the close of business Thursday. About 600 of them recently were delivered to the board by Ronald Carcelli, a Democratic candidate for Struthers mayor, Kale-Pesta said.