Meet MoCo's Most Independent Woman

Gaithersburg resident Geneva Garner, age 108, has voted in more elections than you ever will.

As a blogger, I hear a lot of things. Most of them aren’t very interesting but this item caught my eye. MCDCC officers Alan Banov and Milt Minneman told me there was a 108-year-old woman in Gaithersburg who was going to vote Democratic for the first time. Now I was very skeptical of this, having heard of a 108-year-old woman in North Carolina who was also going to vote for Obama. So I told them, “Something is fishy here... How many 108-year-old Obama voters can there be? I'm not inclined to bite on this line.”

But their source contacted me and supplied me the name of her 108-year-old friend: Geneva Garner. Sure enough, Ms. Garner really is 108. So I drove up to Gaithersburg to meet her at her voting place.

Being a Silver Spring guy, I naturally got lost on the way there. I arrived barely in time as Ms. Garner was entering her community building. Ms. Garner says she has been voting regularly since women first won the right to vote in 1920. She is a Republican but votes “independently.”

And so came the big moment. I asked, “Do you mind if I ask who you’re voting for?” Ms. Garner replied, “I just made up my mind this morning. I’m voting for Ralph Nader. The two parties are for big business!” Ms. Garner has been voting since the time that cars replaced horses and NO ONE is going to tell her how to vote!

I just have one thing to say to Mr. Banov and Mr. Minneman: you, dear sirs, owe me a bon-bon!