Milesburg man is fixture on election day

By Anne Danahy

- adanahy@centredaily.com

At two elections a year, every year, since 1959, Jerry Halderman is closing in on his 100th.

CDT file photo

Jerry Halderman has helped county elections officials organize supplies for every primary and general election since 1959.

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Maybe then he’ll consider full retirement. But for now, at election No. 99, Halderman has no plans to stop his work helping the Centre County Elections Office make sure the primary gets off to a smooth start by getting the poll workers supplies organized, packed and ready for the elections.

“I wanted to get to 100 and then maybe retire,” he said. “I never missed an election night.”

That includes every primary and general election since he started working for the county. Never mind that he retired from his job with the county in 2002 or had a heart attack and surgery in February this year.

“I missed being around the people more than anything,” Halderman, 67, said.

Plus, as someone who likes to help out, he didn’t want to leave his election colleagues hanging. There have been a couple times he wasn’t feeling very good on an election day, but decided against taking a day off.

“I thought, boy, I better get in there, nobody else is going to know how to do that,” he said.

Halderman, who lives in the Milesburg area with his wife, Judy, said the most interesting part of the job has been meeting all the people he’s come across over the years. He’s been in the county Willowbank Building getting ready for today’s election for about two weeks, getting the supplies for the county’s 89 voting precincts in order.

Elections Director Joyce Mc- Kinley said Halderman has gone through the process so many times that he knows exactly what the precincts need to receive and makes sure everything is ready to go.

“With his background, knowledge and experience with the

election process, it certainly makes it run smoother,” McKinley said.

He’s developed a system for making sure the voting supplies —from provisional ballots to “I voted” stickers — are packed and the boxes are labeled, so each goes to the correct precinct.

At about 8 p.m. today, he’ll be back in Willowbank Building waiting for the results to start coming in. That’s when he’ll make sure everything is returned to its place.

“We have a system worked out,” Halderman said.

The night usually ends about midnight — earlier than in past years when the county used paper punch-card ballots. The current system has paper ballots, but voters feed them into counting machines that tabulate the results, speeding the process.

Also gone are the old wooden voting booths and big metal ballot boxes of past years.

“The ballot box was so heavy it took two people to lift it,” Halderman said.

For 48 years, he actually delivered the voting supplies to the precincts too, until his health would no longer allow such heavy lifting.

“Some of them are still voting in the same place they did 50 years ago,” he said.