What matters most for older voters?

This election cycle, older voters consider protecting social security to be a top priority for them. The issue remains an important one for a large number of elderly voters, regardless of political affiliation.

A panel of older voters joined “Arizona Horizon” for the first of three voter education segments to discuss what topics and issues matter to them the most and how their opinions will influence their vote.

The panel included three older registered voters, Mary Lynn Kelly, Lisa Kubie and Mike Taborn. All three guests agreed social security is an important issue for them.

”Social security is important to everyone because it’s your money and everyone is sensitive about that and wants to be aware,” Kelly said.

”I think that what people forget is that since I was 16, I have been paying into it so it really is not an entitlement; it’s our money, and that is what worries me because people lose track of that,” Kubie said.

”Quite a bit of money, interestingly enough, comes right back into the economy so I think that is something that is not talked about nearly enough,” Taborn said.

A popular opinion in Arizona is the privatization of social security. When asked how she felt about the prospect of privatizing social security, Kelly was not on board with the idea.

“Privatization is a very odd thing to me. It is almost what they are doing right now with health care. If you have a venture capital company that is vesting in a hospital, they are at odds with the goal of the hospital, and I feel that may be the case [with social security]” Kelly said.

Kubie was also not on board with the prospect of privatizing social security. “I think it makes it very risky. At this point now we have this certain amount guaranteed every year, and the stock market right now is booming, but it also sometimes doesn’t boom, and then what would happen?” Kubie said.

Taborn was also not interested in the idea of privatizing social security. He, however, was on board with increasing the retirement age one to two years as a reasonable potential solution “considering the health of people now as they get older. One of the things this could also help is people hiring people. Right now, since 65 is that magic number, a lot of people look at that as being the time you roll people out. If you actually had an age that was 68, then I think the mindset would be different”