By Mark Uncapher
In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León set sail in search of the mythical Fountain of Youth. He believed that somewhere in the New World there existed a spring whose waters could reverse the effects of age itself. History tells us he never found it.
Turns out, he was looking in the wrong place.
He should have skipped Florida entirely and headed straight to 151 West Street in Annapolis — headquarters of the Maryland State Board of Elections. Because if the state’s voter rolls are to be believed, Maryland has quietly become the global epicenter of human longevity.
The current oldest verified living person in the world, according to widely accepted demographic records, is 116 years old. That’s remarkable. It’s rare. It’s statistically extraordinary.
Maryland yawns.
Under the steady administrative hand of Election Administrator Jared DeMarinis, the state’s voter rolls reportedly contain 73 registered voters older than the oldest living person on Earth. Seventy-three.
Our senior-most elector? A Josephine Smith of Silver Spring, born in April 1894, making her 131 years old. Apparently, Montgomery County is now an epicenter of medical miracles.
In fact, among Maryland’s 308 voters aged 110 or older, roughly 70 percent reside in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties. One might conclude that those counties possess unique environmental advantages. Perhaps it’s the zoning laws. Perhaps it’s a benefit of the Purple Line.
Or perhaps — and stay with me here — something else is at work.
Let’s narrow the focus to something more manageable: my own Chevy Chase precinct. Not the county. Not the region. A single precinct.
And starting with my own apartment building, according to Maryland’s voter rolls, my “building neighbor,” Frank C. Nall, is 115. Unfortunately, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in 2003. Elsewhere in the building, 117-year-old Dorthea Brennan? She died in 2013. Murray Volkman? He’d be a sprightly 114, except records indicate he passed away in 1995.
Pause and consider that. Murray Volkman has remained on Maryland’s voter rolls for over three decades after his death. Three decades. That is not a clerical hiccup. That is an institutional philosophy.
Curiously, my single precinct reportedly has more “super-aged” voters than the entire city of Baltimore. Either we have discovered a longevity gene pool that eluded global scientists, or the State Board’s voter maintenance protocols deserve a closer look.
Elsewhere in my precinct?
- Rebecca Trooboff, Age 113. Died in 2007.
- Nora Luebke, Age 111, Died 2008
- Florica Visoianu, Age 122. Died in 2005.
- Sadie Buckner, Age 116. Died in 2002.
- Margot Smith, Age 111, Died in 2004.
Now, let’s be clear. The presence of outdated registrations does not automatically indicate fraudulent voting. But the system’s credibility is diminished when the rolls are bloated with implausible registrations. And that erosion is entirely self-inflicted.
Which brings us to the legal backdrop. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit alleging failures to adequately maintain voter rolls in accordance with federal law. The suit named the Maryland State Board of Elections and cites obligations under the National Voter Registration Act to make reasonable efforts to remove ineligible voters.
And how has Annapolis responded? With contrition? With urgency? With an announcement of systemic modernization?
No. Instead, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown defends the state’s voter database practices, warning darkly of “federal overreach” and invoking privacy concerns.
“Privacy concerns” for “voters” who, in some cases, have not drawn breath since the Clinton administration.
One would think that removing a registrant who passed away in 1995 would not constitute a constitutional crisis. One would imagine that acknowledging statistical impossibilities might precede lectures about federalism.
The board insists that list maintenance is complex. But a 131-year-old voter is not an edge case; it is a red flag waving in broad daylight.
If Ponce de León were alive today (and according to the Maryland rolls, that’s entirely plausible), he would abandon mythic springs and instead study Annapolis’ data retention practices. Because while medical science struggles to push human life expectancy past 100, Maryland’s voter database has casually shattered biological constraints.
This is not a partisan issue. Clean rolls are not suppression; they are stewardship. Accuracy is not ideology; it is administration. And when dozens of registrants exceed the known limits of human longevity, the proper response is not defensiveness. It is correction.
Maryland needs to come to terms with the reality that SBE Administrator Jared Demarinis has not discovered the Fountain of Youth and long-deceased voters should not remain on the voter rolls.
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