A rubber band wraps the front page of the La Opinion newspaper featuring pictures of Clinton and Trump in Santa Ana, Calif., May 15, 2016. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters)

A Virginia woman is being spared having to vote for a candidate she didn’t like in the 2016 presidential election — because she’s dead.

“Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15, 2016, at the age of 68,” her obituary, published in Tuesday’s Richmond Times Dispatch, reads.



Noland, you could say, was feeling the urn.

It’s unclear which other candidate she would have supported. Noland’s surviving family could not immediately be reached.

But she isn’t the first to use an obituary to make a political statement.

(Photo: Richmond Times Dispatch)

Just last week, an Alabama woman’s grieving family relayed her dying wish in her obituary.

“In lieu of flowers, do not vote for Donald Trump,” read the Friday obituary in the Opelika-Auburn News for 34-year-old Katherine Michelle Hinds, who died on April 29.

“She was a Blue, southern girl from a Red, southern state,” Hinds’ obit continued. “She hated seeing people in poverty, the mistreatment of animals, the color pink, hot, humid summers, and poor grammar.”

Jeffrey Cohen, a prominent Pittsburgh chiropractor, made a similar request before his death in January.

“Jeffrey would ask that in lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Donald Trump,” read the 70-year-old’s obituary in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Just days after Hillary Clinton announced her 2016 presidential bid, the family of 81-year-old Larry Upright announced his death by urging friends and family not to vote for her.

“The family respectfully asks that you do not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016,” read Upright’s April 15, 2015, obituary. “R.I.P. Grandaddy.”

“He was very passionate about politics and probably passed a little of that on, so it was natural for me to think about that,” his daughter, Jill McLain, told WSOC-TV.

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The family of Elaine Fydrych, a 63-year-old Philadelphia actress, said she made the same request before her death last August.

“In lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Fydrych’s obituary read.

Such last requests are made every election cycle, though the historic unpopularity of both parties’ likely nominees could be politicizing obituaries with negative comments about the candidates.

But not all of them are negative.

Ernest Maynard Overbey Jr., who died in January at the age of 65 in Richmond, Va., after a battle with brain cancer, politely requested those reading his obituary to “please vote for Donald Trump.”

Trump himself tweeted his appreciation for the gesture. But in doing so, the presumptive Republican also misspelled Overbey’s first name.



