Helen Sankey

WEST SUNBURY — It’s been a year of milestones for Helen Sankey, who has spent more than half of her life shepherding borough residents to and from voting booths twice a year.

Sankey turned 90 years old in September, celebrating the occasion with her family with a party at Slippery Rock Community Center.

Today, Sankey hits another milestone: 50 years of service as West Sunbury’s Judge of Elections.

Sankey got her start as an elected official at the prompting of her father-in-law, Earl Sankey.

“He was very involved in the Republican Party,” Sankey said, “and he just asked me one time if I wanted to run.”

Sankey’s father-in-law would never have to ask again. She won election to the position in 1965, becoming the top precinct official for the 100 or so West Sunbury voters she used to know well.

“The residents here were pretty much established,” Sankey said. “It isn’t like today, where they come and go.”

Sankey’s said her first check as an elected official was for $15, and she still has all of her pay stubs and many of the results tapes from past elections. She guesses holding onto the keepsakes is “just one of those things I do, I guess.”

Today she will get paid $135 plus $20 for travel.

Sankey would go on to work in the cafeteria at Moniteau School District and raise six children with her husband, Arthur, all the while remaining West Sunbury’s Judge of Elections.

Sankey said she’s not sure what kept her coming back to the post.

“I just felt it was my duty, and I enjoyed doing it,” Sankey said. “I never thought I’d last this long.”

Sankey was last elected in 2013, and said she believes her current 4-year term will be her last.

“When you get up into your nineties, it gets a little harder,” she said.

For her milestone 2015 election, Sankey said, she and her team of three election workers plan to approach it like business as usual.

“We eat and some of the girls maybe bring crafts in,” Sankey said. “Everybody’s (like) family, and you know almost everybody, which makes it really nice to talk to them.”

As judge of elections Sankey is in charge of filling out all the precinct’s paperwork, escorting voters to voting machines and answering questions they have. She also oversees the precinct’s closing down, and prepares and posts the night’s results.

The polls are open until 8 p.m.

West Sunbury’s lone voting precinct has two electronic voting machines which Sankey closes down and delivers to county election officials herself, she said.

Shari Brewer, county director of elections, said the office does not keep track of precinct officials’ length of service, but Sankey is likely one of several such officials in the county who have been serving for a similar amount of time.