TAHOKA, Texas — One Lynn County resident cast her vote for president less than a month shy of her 101st birthday.

Lynn County said the woman, Helen Bookman, is their oldest voter for the 2020 Presidential election.

“I came to vote, I want to vote. I want to have a voice, it’s very important to me. I have voted for a long time,” Bookman said.

Bookman went to the Life Enrichment Center in Tahoka and voted curbside. Her granddaughter Rhonda Chapa said Bookman started voting at age 20 and that she always instilled in her the importance of exercising her civic duty.

“She’s just always been encouraging to us and tried to get us to go out and do the right thing and vote and exercise our right,” Chapa said.

Chapa said her grandmother been paying close attention to what has been happening politically.

“She listens to the debates and she hadn’t really commented one way or the other but she gets a kick out of what they all say, especially the debate, it was really funny to her,” she said.

Bennie Nance, Bookman’s daughter-in-law, said her mother-in-law has always been a motivating person and a person of action.

“She just went a lot and always went to vote whenever the time was,” she said. “She was just very active in the community, everybody knew her and called her nanny because that’s what the kids called her.”