Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 | 11:08 a.m.
Voting was a patriotic responsibility that Las Vegan Alton Lee Overton did not take lightly.
Fifty years ago, he voted for the first time when he turned 21. While serving in the Air Force in Vietnam, he voted by absentee ballot. As a Las Vegas resident of 17 years, he walked across the street from his home near Nellis Boulevard and Desert Inn Road each Election Day to vote at a school.
Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer this past summer, Overton, a Republican, was determined to vote for President George W. Bush if it was the last thing he did.
It pretty much was.
Overton awoke Sunday and asked his wife for his mail-in ballot, filled it out, signed it, sealed it and asked a family member to immediately take it to a nearby mail box and drop it in. Six hours later, he died, three months to the day after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was 71.
Whether Overton's vote will count depends on whether or not the signature on the ballot matches the signature on his registration card at the Clark County Election Department, state voting officials said Monday.
Secretary of State's office spokesman Steve George said for the ballot to be a good one, Overton must have been alive at the time it was filled out and that the signed ballot must arrive at the Clark County Election Department by Election Day, Nov. 2.
"It is treated the same as someone voting at the polls on Election Day then getting hit and killed by a car later that day," George said.
Overton's ballot was not in Monday's incoming mail, a Clark County Election Department official said.
"I know that Dad knew that he did not have much time left, but the voting process was very important to him -- he just had to vote," said William "Bill" Overton of Las Vegas. "And he was so proud that his granddaughter Anne just turned 18 and plans to vote for the first time in November."
While Overton had voted by absentee ballot while he was overseas more than 30 years ago, he was not aware that a Las Vegas resident could vote by absentee ballot while living in Las Vegas until another of his sons, Donald Overton of California, informed him of it recently.
"He still thought he would make it to the November election, but, just in case, I sent in for an absentee ballot for him," Donald said. "Fortunately it arrived late last week."
Gertrude Anne Overton, Alton's high school sweetheart and wife of 54 years, said that as a teenager, Alton often said he could not wait until he turned 21 so he could cast his first ballot, and he never lost his passion for voting.
"It was his last wish to vote in this election," she said. "When he fulfilled that final wish yesterday, you could see it was such a great weight off of him. He died peacefully in his sleep."
Overton's sons said they were impressed that some of their father's final thoughts were of doing his civic duty, even though he knew he would not live to see the outcome of his action nor benefit from it.
Although Alton Overton had no qualms about revealing to the world that he cast his last ballot for Bush, his family said he took to his grave his selections on the on the rest of his ballot.
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