Former president, in hospice care since last year, will turn 100 a month before the November election

Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.

“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Harris, Carter’s fellow Democrat, will face the Republican Trump for the presidency on 5 November. Carter’s 100th birthday will fall on 1 October.

A Democrat who was in the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter is the oldest living president. In ill health for several years, his family announced that he entered hospice care on 18 February 2023. Many took that announcement to mean Carter was near the end of his life.

  • dneaves@lemmy.world
    200·
    3 months ago

    Imagine being so disliked that it becomes the goal of elderly voters to live long enough to vote against you, nevermind that it’s a former president

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    1082·
    3 months ago

    Jimmy Carter lives long enough to vote.
    Dies.
    The next day:
    Fox News “Kamala Harris killed Jimmy Carter!”

    • Routhinator@startrek.websiteEnglish
      12·
      3 months ago

      Call me a pessimist, but I’d be willing to bet the Republicans would put up legislation to argue that anyone that dies after the election within X number of days has their vote disqualified.

      • Mannivu@feddit.it
        15·
        3 months ago

        They’d argue that he really died after the vote. “Are we sure they didn’t declare his death two days later just to cast in his vote?”

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    46·
    3 months ago

    He can request an absentee ballot starting August 19th. Hopefully he gets and returns it quickly.

      • neoman4426@fedia.io
        52·
        3 months ago

        Depends on the state. Looks like Carter is registered in Georgia, and according to an article from 2020 when Republicans were bald face lying that long dead people were voting a lot. Someone from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office is quoted as saying secrecy rules don’t allow rejecting a ballot when a voter dies before Election Day.

        “You can’t go back and get that ballot back out. It’s just physically impossible, given the privacy rules in our state,”. May or may not still be accurate, or may have never been accurate, but that’s what the first article I found when searching says.

        • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          17·
          3 months ago

          Expect fuckery to happen this time. Suddenly, perfectly valid absentee ballots for Harris will suddenly be “uncertifiable” and “closer inspection must be made”.

          Then “they wouldn’t have made a difference and we declare Trump the winner.”

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
        23·
        3 months ago

        Depends on the state.

        Some states interpret that a submitted absentee ballot has been cast, and you can’t “un-vote”, not least because it’s anonymous and so there’s no way to know.
        If you vote in person, drop your ballot in the box and then keel over, they don’t fish your ballot out of the box.

        Other states interpret a submitted ballot as having been filled out and collected, but not yet cast. They’re usually kept in the sealed envelope with voter identification on them until they’re opened and anonymously counted when voting begins. They check names against the voter registry as they process them, and there’s a process for double and triple checking things to ensure there’s been no error (where I am they try and call you or otherwise get in touch with you, and if there’s any doubt your ballot becomes provisional so they can dig in if it’s close enough to matter).
        If you vote in person, and keel over before putting your ballot in the box, they don’t pick your ballot up and drop it in for you.

        It looks like Georgia falls into that first category.
        It’s a vanishingly small edge case so it doesn’t get tested that often.

  • Elsie@lemmy.ml
    351·
    3 months ago

    We don’t have kings in America but this man is a king!