A Bronx Woman Is 164 Years Old, If Her Voter Registration Card Is To Be Believed

Luz Pabellon was born on Feb. 14, 1941; of that, she’s pretty sure. But the New York Board of Elections believes otherwise. According to their official records, she was born on January 1, 1850, making her 164 years old, according to her voter registration card.

The Puerto-Rican born Pabellon, who lives a quiet life in the Bronx, according to The New York Post, was rather alarmed indeed to learn that she’s actually 164-years-old. In fact, when a reporter contacted her about her erroneous voter registration card, she said the insinuation that she’s old enough to have voted for Ulysses S. Grant was rather insulting.

“That’s not me! I don’t know why they did that!”

The 73-year-old registered Democrat said she’s been voting since the 70’s — the 1970’s, that is.

“That’s very strange. I’ve been voting for many years.”

Newsday reports that New York Board of Elections officials think they know what caused Ms. Pabellon’s voter registration card to identify her as 164 years old. When she registered in 1978, she mistakenly put the words “18+” in the date-of-birth section of her voter registration card – meaning she meant to imply that she was over the age of 18, not that she was born in the 1800s. When New York officials entered all of those ink-and-paper voter registration records onto computer files in the ensuing decades, an operator somewhere put her birth date as 1/1/1850 by default. In fact, it’s likely that Ms. Pabellon isn’t the only New York voter whose birth date was unclear on their voter registration cards and was entered to the default date of January 1, 1850.

If that’s true, then it’s possible that New York has hundreds or even thousands of 164-year-old voters, according to the Post. Bronx politician William Russell Moore told the Post that he believes the possibility of thousands of 164-year-old voters is exactly why voter fraud is a real issue.

“This is crazy. It’s insane. The Board of Elections is very inept. How many people are they doing this to? This is the type of inattention that allows fraud to take place.”

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer told the Post that she will be calling on New York election officials to audit their voter registration records to look for more 164-year-old voters.

“That’s so crazy. I’ve never heard anything like that before. It’s just unbelievable.”

Sometimes computer errors result in newsworthy stories, like the Georgia man who received a check from the Veteran’s Administration for $690 million, or the Texas woman who received a power bill for $1.3 million. But as of this post, Luz Pabellon is the only person known to have a voter registration card that lists them as 164 years old.

[Image courtesy of: New York Post]