THE historic United States Election 2020 looks set for the highest recorded voter turnout in modern times as more than 100million have casted their votes already – and Americans continue to line up in snaking queues across the country
More than 100 million Americans have already cast a vote in the 2020 presidential election.
The US Elections Project at the University of Florida say the snaking queues are driving what is expected to the highest turnout in modern times.
Wearing face masks and standing spaced apart, Americans waited at polling stations early today to choose a president on an Election Day marked so far by orderliness and short lines, even as major cities braced for potential unrest.
The masks and boarded-up stores in many city centres were reminders of two of the issues shaping 2020’s polarising elections, with Covid-19 still ravaging parts of the country after a summer of sometimes violence-marred protests against police brutality and racism.
Poll workers guessed the short lines in many places were due to an unprecedented wave of early voting, with more than 90 million ballots cast before Election Day.
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 candidate Joe Biden, a former vice president seeking to replace President Donald Trump, a Republican, in the White House.
“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, who had flown back to Atlanta from New York just for this purpose.
Of Trump, she said, “He’s dividing our country.”
In Hialeah, a predominantly Cuban-American suburb of Miami, Marcos Antonio Valero, 62, was voting for Trump, as he had done in 2016.
He 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.”
At a polling station in Houston, Texas, Andy Valadez was blowing a shofar wrapped in a US flag.
A shofar is a trumpet used in Jewish and some Christian ceremonies and, in this instance, as a way to pray for a Trump victory, according to Valadez.
“We want to pray for a fair election,” the 55-year-old marketing executive said. “We believe in America and want everyone to have a safe voting experience.”
– Mirror.co.uk
