In Sebastian, Florida, voting in an American Legion corridor had to close from COVID-19.
In the excessive southwest of Chicago, a maskless man approached an electoral college and shouted, “Do you have a mask inside?”A voting officer looked, rolled his eyes and beckoned him in.
In Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, Robert Kock, 52, said he did not accept mail delivery as true, so he voted on the user “to have my vote passed to the device and compiled. “
And in Miami, Eduardo Vega, 81, and his wife went to the polls as they have in each and every presidential election since they became U. S. citizens in 2005.
Why brave the crowd and the viral danger?” Tradition,” said Vega, dressed in a medical mask with frayed edges. “We voted on the right day on the calendar. “
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election, doubts arose about whether in-person voting could pass smoothly as higher instances in many states, and whether voting would spread the virus even more.
Across the country, other people said they got ahead of themselves because they wanted to make sure their votes were important. They reported that the virus had replaced her voting experience, but had not derailed her. Fewer people online than expected, hand sanitist.
In the Brooklyn borough of New York, 28-year-old Zach Finley said he was thinking about voting by mail but had the idea that he was because he had already contracted COVID-19 (possibly not, the science about it not established) said there was a lot of hand sanitizer and everyone was wearing masks.
Voters came in and out quickly. ” They almost had more election officials than they needed,” he said.
Wolff said he used to hand over his ID card to New York election officials and lend it, but they didn’t touch anything this year. Separate voting booths in Plexiglass. All masked.
“I felt safe,” Wolff said, “it’s transparent. “
Coronavirus is mainly transmitted through respiratory drops that are released when other people communicate and cough, and in all likelihood by touching infected surfaces. The longer and narrower the interaction (think classic and crowded polling stations), the greater the risk.
By Tuesday, about 9. 3 million Americans had become inflamed with COVID-19 and about 232,000 had died. Election and fitness officials have been involved for weeks in which overcrowded polling places can exacerbate the epidemic, and have suggested Americans vote early or by mail.
These calls to sound: by the day of the election, almost a hundred million votes had been cast in advance. In some states, such as Texas and Michigan, early voting exceeded 90% of all ballots counted in the 2016 presidential election.
However, while early voting broke records, it was unclear how many would go to the polls on Tuesday and how the mechanism of American democracy would handle a simultaneous wave of votes and viruses.
In San Diego County, pre-election groceries from Voter Registrar Michael Vu included 800,000 gloves, 300,000 masks, 25,000 bottles of sanitary wipes, and 1,800 plexiglass screens.
Vu said COVID-19 had forced San Diego County to move from 1,350 community polling stations for the March primary to 235 “super-consolidated” sites.
Their workplace has drawn up plans for everyone against everyone, but “it all depends on the behavior of the voters. “
On Tuesday, this habit was tested with US electoral infrastructure. But it’s not the first time Early reports in some regions advised low participation, perhaps due to increased early voting and mail voting.
In Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, Arlyn Hernandez stopped at the library where his mother regularly votes and feared he was at the site. It looked empty.
It soon became transparent that the issue of the voting position for soft traffic, which is not unusual Tuesday in South Florida.
Nearly nine million Floridans voted by mail or voted early in person, which is almost the total number of electorates in the 2016 election and flattens the curve for Election Day.
Just after 8 a. m. , there was no queue on the Bertie Backus campus of Columbia University’s District Community College. Election officials and volunteers outnumbered voters.
The campus, a COVID-19 control for the city, has been changed by Election Day with marks on the floor for social estating and symptoms that require COVID caution.
Kendra Washington, 37, dressed in gray tights, a feather jacket and a Dallas Cowboys face mask, winked when asked about his presidential election.
“It’s important, ” he said. I didn’t accept the mail-order voting process as true. I wanted to know he’d count. Mail is lost; other people throw ballots. “
States have expanded mail voting because of the pandemic, which President Donald Trump says leads to fraud.
This summer, the postal service was embroiled in controversy after deciding to disable sorting machines, ban overtime and leave mail if you are late. A lawsuit temporarily blocked operational adjustments criticized for causing mail delays.
At an electoral college in Ankeny, Iowa, a line of about a hundred electorates lay in a parking lot. Social estinement was effective, but it masked sporadically. Danielle Baumler was one of the other unmasked people.
Baumler, who is making plans for her wedding, said she is too busy to vote early and considers that voting on Election Day is no more complicated than going to the grocery store.
He calculated his arrival at the opening of the ballot at the Lutheran Church of Hope. “It’s going from what I thought, ” he said.
Rasul Freelin, a police sergeant, and his 18-year-old son Diata Freelin waited in nearly free weather for the ballot to open at an elementary school in southwest Chicago.
Freelin said his schedule prevented him from going to the polls early and that he used to vote in person. Both men wore a mask and gloves before voting.
They had to press a button to make the machines work, “so we tried to take some extra precautions,” Freelin said.
“My son said wow, that’s why our ancestors died, and that’s why other people walked over Selma, queuing for 40 minutes and spending 20 minutes filling the bubbles,” he said. “What a sacrifice, however, is for the right to express one’s voice. “
In Asheville, North Carolina, Mary Sloan, 85, did not hesitate to return to her former kindergarten, now a network center, to vote for a pandemic. She and her daughter Alisha Robinson used the option to vote on the street, undeterred by the increase in COVID. -19 instances across the state.
“I just wanted to make sure my opinion expressed, ” said Robinson, who, like her
mother, voted for democrats from the most sensitive to those behind the poll. “It turns out that more and more people come to the polls to vote and not just to say that their opinion doesn’t matter. “
With temperatures just above 0oC on Tuesday morning, Asheville’s election venues gave the impression that they were working well, and ballot observers outnumbered voters.
“I almost know he voted early,” said Hamp Hampton, a 70-year-old surveyor who voted Tuesday by tradition.
Hampton said he was serious about pandemic precautions, but that logging users value him. “Besides going to the doctor, it’s probably the riskiest thing I’ve done” since March, he said. “I wait for a line, to tell you the truth, because I need other people to come out to vote. “
Henry Monreal, 75, first in line at Fire Station No. 7 in El Paso, Texas. He said he was motivated by the suffering caused by COVID-19 in his city and the rest of the United States.
“People are thinking about the pandemic,” said Monreal, a retired smelter. “People are wasting their jobs. They want help. “
Another El Paso resident, Amy Hensley-Limon, said she would not allow a virus to interfere with her vote: “I set out to count my ballot and did so with all the mandatory precautions. “
Neighbors Eliza White, 57, and Corey Felton, 50, left an elementary school on Chicago’s south side, laughing and chatting about their masks. They were both born and raised in the area, and met inside.
There was no queue at the polling station and the few people who showed up on Tuesday morning came in directly. White and Felton said they were inspired by precautions. Everyone dressed in a mask and there were a lot of wet wipes and disinfectant.
“It’s safer there than here, ” said White.
Kiana Keys, 40, Chicago’s finance executive, took two of her three children, Jordan, 8 and Dallas, 6, to the polls with her.
Keys said his circle of relatives had been quarantined since March and that his grandmother is in a nursing home recovering.
“I couldn’t move on to my son’s graduation. I couldn’t take my son to college,” she said. But he was able to vote on Tuesday and do it as a training moment for the kids.
“I explained the importance of having a president make the decisions for you,” he said. “Our ancestors fought for this right. I will exercise my right and so will I to them to be a part of it. “
Sharon Anhalt, a 72-year-old retired registered nurse in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, had planned to vote by mail due to a fitness issue, but needed to threaten a postal delay. He ended up in line in front of a library.
“I’m going to make sure my survey is ruined,” he said. “That’s the most productive thing I can do. I don’t need it to fly into our world. “
Contribution: Matt Piper, Ryan Miller, Grace Hauck, Alan Gomez, Felix Chavez, Kimberly Norvell, Brian Gordon, Trevor Hughes, Kyle Bogenstose, Tim Archuleta and Ritu Sehgal, Chris Woodyard, Savannah Berhmann