Michigan Man Dies At Polls, Is Revived To Vote

An elderly Michigan man whose name and age were not released was voting with his wife at a Southfield Township polling station when he collapsed and died before being revived.

A home care nurse, Ty Houston, was also voting at the time and took action. The elderly man was down, and he wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse. Houston began CPR.

“I was filling out the form as were an elderly couple sitting at a nearby table,” Houston told the Detroit News on Tuesday. “His wife, who was helping him fill out the ballot, asked him a couple of questions but he didn’t respond. She screamed for help and I went over to see what I could do.

“He was dead,” Houston added. “He had no heartbeat and he wasn’t breathing. I started CPR, and after a few minutes, he revived and started breathing again. He knew his name and his wife’s name.”

The Huffington Post reports that what happened next was nothing short of surprising. While CPR is often an effective treatment, the concern of most people brought back from the edge of death is for their health. For the unnamed elderly Michigan voter, he had just one question.

“Did I vote?”

The man’s wife tried to tell him that the vote wasn’t important in relation to his health scare, but the man was undeterred. He told her only two things mattered.

“That I love you and that I finished what I came here to do—vote,” he said.

For the record, he did manage to cast his ballot.

The elderly voter who came back to life at a Michigan polling place was taken to a hospital for evaluation. A poll worker, Clerk Sharon Tischler, confirmed the story to the Detroit News but did not know the names of the man or his wife.

“It was definitely a 911 scenario,” Tischler said. “It was great there was someone around to render aid.”