From the Archives: World War I veterans vote

For the Nov. 5, 1940, presidential election, Walter Howard planned to vote. He also assisted his friend Glenn Switzer to the voting booth.

A short story in the next morning’s Los Angeles Times explains:

Buddies stick together!

This was demonstrated in Precinct No. 1 in Duarte yesterday when Walter Howard, World War veteran, carried his comrade, Glenn Switzer, to the polls to cast his vote in the presidential election.

The two men met at the United States Veterans' Facility in West Los Angeles recently and then Switzer, suffering from partial paralysis caused by a nerve injury, was moved to a Duarte sanitarium.

When election day came, however, Howard was on the scene to take his comrade to the polls.

Neither would say how he voted.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected. Roosevelt had 449 electoral votes to Wendell Willkie’s 82.

This post was originally published on Nov. 6, 2012.