Florida Woman In Labor Stopped To Vote Before Going To The Hospital

With Election Day being just days away, one pregnant Florida woman wanted to be sure that she cast her vote, despite being in labor. 

Poll worker Karen Brinceno Gonzalez told Fox 35 that the unidentified mother-to-be was already in labor on Tuesday when she showed up at the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office in Orlando. She remained in the car while her husband ran inside and explained the situation to the poll workers. 

“He’s like, ‘Yeah, she’s about to have a baby, but she won’t go to the hospital to have a baby until she votes,’” Gonzalez told the local news outlet. “I was like, OK, what can I do to facilitate her to vote? Where is she? Where can I go to help?”

Gonzalez then sprang into action. She went out to the vehicle, where she verified the woman’s identification before providing her with a mail-in ballot. However, the woman refused to mail in her ballot. She insisted on filling it out at that very moment.

“She said, ‘No! No! No! I need to fill it out right now,’” Gonzalez told Fox 35. “So she filled it out. I gave her an ‘I VOTED’ sticker, and she was off to the hospital.”

Another poll worker, Eileen Deliz, told the Orlando Sentinel that situations such as these make their work within the elections office worthwhile. 

“We are very, very busy, but when something like that happens it just makes our day,” she told the paper. “It kind of validates what we do [and] the importance of voting. Every election cycle brings us a great little story.”