A 102-YEAR-OLD Stockton man was bumped from San Joaquin County’s voting rolls because officials mistakenly thought he had died.
Marvin Lykins, a retired physician and World War II veteran, was removed from the rolls last month in what the county Registrar of Voters office described as an “isolated incident” and a “rare clerical error.”
Reached by phone, Lykins assured Stocktonia that he is very much alive.
“I think they should revise their thinking,” said Lykins, who has lived in Stockton for the past 10 years. “I’m not over yet.”
The county registrar isn’t the only one surprised by Lykins’ age. The centenarian, who worked for many years as a family doctor in the Tulare County city of Porterville, said many folks have trouble believing the triple digits when he tells them how old he is.
But being erased from the county’s voter rolls was even more upsetting, he said. Maintaining his status as a registered voter is no small matter, Lykins said. He recalled having cast a presidential ballot for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 while serving in the Army during World War II.
He enlisted his daughter, who lives six blocks away in Stockton, to help straighten out the mess.
San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Olivia Hale explained how the error occurred. She told Stocktonia that the California Secretary of State’s office routinely sends a notice to her office when a death record of someone over the age of 100 appears to match a voter registration.
In Lykins’ case, there apparently was a discrepancy between the two documents that wasn’t fully checked. It turns out the death record was for somebody else.
She said she phoned Lykins last week to apologize for the mistake. She also issued a statement on the matter. In it, she blamed “a rare clerical error while processing a voter roll maintenance list we received from the Secretary of State’s office.”
Hale said the oversight was corrected as soon as her office received Lykins’ new online registration. His voter cancelation occurred Feb. 10, but was restored later in the month.
“We sincerely value Mr. Lykins’ dedication as a voter over the past eight decades, and we appreciate his family bringing this issue to our attention.” Olivia Hale, San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters
Hale said San Joaquin County’s Registrar of Voters office has added staff training to make sure the same kind of snafu does not reoccur. In addition to alerts from the state, she said her office also regularly checks death notices of everyone of voting age in the county for matches against the voter rolls as part of an ongoing effort to prevent voter fraud.
“We sincerely value Mr. Lykins’ dedication as a voter over the past eight decades, and we appreciate his family bringing this issue to our attention,” Hale said in her statement.
The effort won’t be in vain. Though he speaks softly and Lykins admits he’s “not as sharp” as he used to be, he sounds plenty fit and feisty — and plans to be around for future elections.
This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.