Elizabeth Waibel/The Gazette Sally Guardia of Rockville hopes to see President Barack Obama and Congressman Chris Van Hollen re-elected this year.

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Rockville resident Sally Guardia thinks President Barack Obama is doing a good job, but needs another term to finish what he started.

“He was handed a mess, and he has been trying to fix things,” she said. “He needs more time. It’s the equivalent of his trying to turn an aircraft carrier around. And I think he’s doing it, but aircraft carriers don’t move fast.”

Guardia wants Obama in the Oval Office to protect the Affordable Care Act and in case another Supreme Court seat opens up within the next four years.

“I want him there, continuing what he’s been trying to do,” she said.

Guardia, a registered Democrat, said Obama also needs a Congress that will work with him. She plans to vote for Congressman Chris Van Hollen, “no question about it,” but not just because he is a Democrat.

“I think he’s served this community well and should be re-elected,” Guardia said.

Since she moved to Rockville in 1971, Guardia, 72, has lived in the same house and has a good memory of what it was like growing up in the ’50s and ’60s. She said she is concerned that women will take a major step backward if Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and a Republican Congress are elected.

“I believe that they are more than wiling to take us back 40 years,” she said. “I’m not willing to go.”

When it comes to this year’s hotly contested ballot questions, Guardia plans to vote in favor of same-sex marriage and allowing some undocumented immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public college. She is not sure about the gambling expansion question, however, and says she probably will not vote either way on that.

”I think it’s a choice between two bad options,” Guardia said. “I voted against gambling a couple of years ago, and now ... I don’t know how I’m going to vote.”

As far as how election campaigns are being waged, the most critical issue for Guardia are efforts she thinks are designed to keep people away from the polls. One example was a series of billboards in Wisconsin and Ohio that warned, “Voter fraud is a felony!” and advertised the maximum penalties for illegal voting.

The outdoor advertising company that owned the billboards recently took the ads down, but Guardia worries things like that could frighten lawful voters.

“That kind of intimidation, I think, is just despicable,” she said.

Guardia has been able to avoid many of the campaign ads this year, partly because she does not own a television, but judging from what she reads in the papers, she thinks this campaign has been meanspirited, especially when it comes to the Tea Party.

“I feel very strongly that it has been a mean campaign,” she said.

Guardia has not seen much this election season to make her hopeful, except for the fact that her candidate, President Obama, did well in the last debate.

“I’ll be real happy when the election is over,” she said.