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Hospital inpatients cast bedside votes

When Bill Leavelle wound up at University Medical Center Monday night after a bout of dizziness, he thought he might miss Election Day.

The retired computer company executive, a 68-year-old enthusiastic Republican, was worried that his party needed every vote. So he asked his wife, Jan, to see what election officials could do.

When Jan voted in their East Side precinct, she asked poll worker Howard Lipsett if he could help. A telephone call to the Pima County Recorder’s Office was all it took. An election worker was dispatched to UMC with a ballot.

“I was rather pleased and surprised that they have a service like this,” said Bill, who was home from the hospital Wednesday afternoon.

About 30 “emergency ballots” were brought to UPH Hospital at Kino Campus, Tucson Medical Center, University Medical Center, Northwest Medical Center and the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System on Tuesday, said Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez.

“They call in and say ‘I had an accident or a car crash or something,’ and we send (ballots) out,” she said.

Before the election, workers from Rodriguez’s office made the rounds at hospitals with mail-in ballots for people who knew they wouldn’t be able to get to polls, Rodriguez said.

Leavelle is glad he was able to do his part, despite the beating his party took.

“I got my vote in,” he said.

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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