Fifty November general elections have passed “in the blink of an eye,” said Rita Lese as she was inducted into the state’s Voter Hall of Fame on Friday.
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 “greatest thing” 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 last 50 years, just down the road from their polling place, she’d walk to cast her ballot in rain and sun.
Lese, 77, was one of three Chester County residents — including her husband, Michael Lese, and Patricia Conroy — to be recognized for voting in 50 consecutive November elections during Chester County’s Board of Elections meeting Friday.
Established in 1986, the Voter Hall of Fame 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’s celebration increases Chester County’s contribution to that tally to 118, officials said.
“So there’s no excuse for the rest of us, is what you’re saying?” Josh Maxwell, the chairman of the county’s board of elections, asked Rita Lese.
It appears no.
It was a “a huge commitment and a tremendous accomplishment,” said Stephanie Reid, executive deputy secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State.
“There 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,” she said during the ceremony Friday. “Yet they persevered.”
But when Rita Lese thinks about what the suffragettes went through to secure some women’s right to vote in 1920, she can’t 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.
“When 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,” he said.
The Leses’ civic engagement hasn’t 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’d 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’s brought Rita in as an emergency poll worker when he’s low on poll workers.
It’s never been just about the issues for the Leses, but just the importance of showing up.
“It’s what you do,” Michael said in an interview.
“It’s what you do,” Rita echoed. “It’s a circle on the calendar, and that’s the day you vote.”
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’ve seen the evolution in voting: “from write-ins, to the styluses, to the little circles and different machines.”
With a rise in mail ballots, the crowds haven’t been the same, they said. But as their daughters are avid voters by mail ballots, they hope that participation hasn’t declined either. (In 2024, 77% of Pennsylvania’s eligible voters cast a ballot in the November election, 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.)
The Leses joked they’d hopefully go for another 25 years of consecutive elections.
Meanwhile, inductee Patricia Conroy, 79, came to her own civic participation a little differently. Her father, a longtime mail carrier who raised her and her four siblings basically on his own, “cared a whole lot about voting,” she said.
One Election Day, she remembers him coming home, remarking that someone told him they wouldn’t be voting: “Just imagine if everybody felt that way,” she recalls him saying.
That stayed with her.
“And so, I’ve been voting, all the time,” she said.
Elections have become a significant part of her family’s 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.
A retired real estate agent, 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 — who met on the aptly patriotic Fourth of July as teenagers in 1966 — have early November birthdays. She remembers apologizing to him for missing his birthday in 1992 to celebrate President Bill Clinton’s win. (“I told him: You understand, we’re partying,” she said.)
There are other memorable elections: Gov. Josh Shapiro’s election was a highlight, she said. And some others are notable for not going her way, she said.
“Let’s just say we had a lot of laughs and a lot of tears on various election nights,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Democrat who represents Chester County, called the three “exemplars of what model citizens should be.”
“Elections and candidates have clearly changed over those 50 years,” she said. “Our country has changed, but throughout it, you have made your voice heard.”
For those keen to start their long, storied voting history, voter registration closes Oct. 19.
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