Americans began casting ballots yesterday on an election day unlike any other, braving the threat of COVID-19 and the potential for violence and intimidation after one of the most polarizing presidential races in US history.
In and around polling places across the country, reminders of a election year shaped by the pandemic, civil unrest and bruising political partisanship greeted voters, although more than 90 million ballots had been submitted in an unprecedented wave of early voting.
Many will wear masks to the polls — either by choice or by official mandate — with the COVID-19 outbreak raging in many parts of the country.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Some voters in major cities saw businesses boarded up as a precaution against politically motivated vandalism, an extraordinary sight on election day in the US, where voting is typically peaceful in the modern era.
In Atlanta, Georgia, about a dozen voters were lined up before sunrise at the Piedmont Park Conservancy.
First in line was Ginnie House, shivering in the cold, waiting to cast a vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate, former US vice president Joe Biden.
Photo: Reuters
“I lost my absentee ballot and I’m not going to miss this vote,” said House, a 22-year-old actor and creative writing student in New York City who had flown back just for this purpose.
Of US President Donald Trump, she said: “He’s dividing our country.”
In Hialeah, a predominantly Cuban suburb of Miami, Marcos Antonio Valero, 62, was voting for Trump, as he had done in 2016, and said he took the day off from his job as a construction worker to cast his ballot in person because he did not trust voting by mail.
He made no prediction as to which way Florida, a closely fought battleground state, would tip.
“It’s a secret, a mystery,” he said. “No one knows how it’s going to end until we all know.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil rights groups said they were watching closely for signs of voter intimidation.
The ACLU’s Georgia affiliate deployed about 300 lawyers across the state at about 50 potential “hot spots” for voting trouble, including 15 polling places in Atlanta.
The US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has deployed staff to 18 states to monitor for voter intimidation and suppression, including in some battleground counties and in cities shaken by civil unrest this year.
Police and businesses said they were taking precautions to protect property, with memories still fresh of sometimes-violent protests over racial injustice in many cities over the summer.
In New York City, the iconic Empire State Building, the Macy’s department store, and the skyscraper that houses the Trump-favored Fox News channel were among buildings that were boarded up.
A record-setting 97.7 million early votes had been cast either in-person or by mail as of Monday afternoon, representing about 40 percent of all Americans who are legally eligible to vote.
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