Election Day Live: Following Voters Across The Country - The New York Times
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:43 p.m. ET
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Voters in Miami, Fla., on Tuesday. Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
MIAMI — The Liberty City voting site was three blocks from a park where a memorial displayed tombstone-shaped placards bearing the names of neighborhood victims of the coronavirus, which has hit Black communities especially hard.
Charius Spears, 33, a postal worker, said he went with Joe Biden, but with reservations, concerned both about Mr. Biden’s past criminal justice policies, but also concerned that “Trump doesn’t like the Post Office.” A sometime voter, Mr. Spears, who is Black, said he voted for Barack H. Obama in his first term but skipped the next two presidential elections.
Antonio Holmes, 45, a first-time voter and an ironworker, said he registered two months ago, “Once I heard what Sleepy Joe was talking about.” Mr. Holmes, who is also Black, said he loved his guns and voted for President Trump because “this Black Lives Matter is just overbearing,” and Mr. Biden “doesn’t have the stamina or energy to run the country.”
Mr. Holmes said the president was not to blame for the pandemic. “He did the best he can do,” he said.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:43 p.m. ET
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Election officials in North Carolina decided on Tuesday to extend voting at four precincts beyond the scheduled 7:30 p.m. close of the polls, which will delay the release of the state’s results.
Officials stressed that the extension, which they said would be for less than an hour, was a relatively routine occurrence. The North Carolina State Board of Elections said in a statement that it was “ not unusual for minor issues to occur at polling sites that result in a brief disruption of voting.”
The extensions were limited to the four sites, out of more than 2,600 statewide, the longest of which will last for 45 minutes. The State Board of Elections made the decision during an emergency meeting.
In Cabarrus County, outside of Charlotte, the board extended voting by 17 minutes at First Baptist Missionary Church in Concord. In Guilford County, where Greensboro is the county seat, it ordered a 34-minute extension at one elementary school. In Sampson County, outside Fayetteville, where two precincts opened late, voting was extended by 24 minutes at one, and 45 minutes at the other.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:43 p.m. ET
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Kanye West making his first campaign appearance, in North Charleston, S.C., in July.Credit...Lauren Petracca Ipetracca/The Post And Courier, via Associated Press
Kanye West, the billionaire hip-hop artist and fashion designer who launched an independent presidential bid earlier this year, cast a vote for himself on Tuesday in what he said on Twitter was his first time voting in a presidential election.
Because Mr. West, whose campaign began relatively late in the presidential race, failed to qualify for the ballot in Wyoming, where he lives, he was forced to vote for his own ticket as a write-in option.
“Keep believing Kanye 2020,” he wrote on Twitter, where he shared a video of his ballot. (Wyoming does not have laws forbidding photos of completed ballots.)
He subsequently shared a second video of his ballot being scanned, which he called “the first vote of my life.”
Mr. West’s campaign was dogged by questions from its inception. When the music mogul launched his bid, some Democrats feared that Mr. West, who has previously voiced his support for President Trump, could be a spoiler in competitive states, siphoning votes that might have gone to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Even with the help, Mr. West’s candidacy was marked by a struggle to make the ballot in most states. The campaign missed the deadline in many states and failed to collect enough valid signatures in others.
But Mr. West does appear on ballots in a dozen states, including Colorado, Minnesota and Iowa.
Trip Gabriel in Butler County, Pa.
It’ll be hard to interpret Pennsylvania results tonight because many mail votes won’t be reported. But Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) says it will report mail ballots quickly.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:32 p.m. ET
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By Emily Rhyne and Kassie Bracken
By Emily Rhyne and Kassie Bracken
By Emily Rhyne and Kassie Bracken
By Emily Rhyne and Kassie Bracken
I have spent the day here in Philadelphia, one of the most hotly-contested cities in one of the most important battleground states.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:28 p.m. ET
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PARKLAND, Fla. — The memories of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed in 2018, were still fresh on Tuesday afternoon at a voting precinct at nearby Pine Trails Park. In the days after the massacre, the park served as a place for vigils, mourning and the birth of the March for Our Lives movement.
Keana Salle, who was a student at Stoneman Douglas two years ago, voted for the first time.
“I wake up every single day and do everything I do as if it’s my last day,” she said.
Ms. Salle said she initially wasn’t planning to vote but did, in the end, for Joseph R. Biden Jr. She described the former vice president as the least unacceptable choice.
“I know every vote matters,” she said. “And I am an African-American woman, and I can do that.”
Manuel Oliver, whose son, Joaquin, was killed in the shooting, has endorsed Mr. Biden and was also out at the park on Tuesday.
“We need another administration, someone who is concerned for what we’re fighting for,” said Mr. Oliver, who has campaigned for gun control across the country, painting murals in his son’s memory.
Among the volunteers holding a Biden sign in the air was Jay Budhram, who coached a soccer team that lost one of its players, Gina Montalto, in the shooting. Mr. Budhram’s daughter, Aubree, 17, now a freshman at Stoneman Douglas, was also volunteering at the polls — perhaps another sign of how the tragedy has inspired a younger generation to get involved in politics.
“She wants that connection with other people,” her father said.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:27 p.m. ET
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WEST LIBERTY, Iowa — Omar Martinez, 30, who owns a body shop here, has lived in Iowa since he was eight years old, when his family immigrated from Mexico. But it took the events of 2016 to inspire him to finalize the process of obtaining his citizenship.
“It really hit me when Trump was actually elected,” he said “It was an eye-opener for me. Hearing all the raids that were starting to happen, and all these rumors going on — I finally decided to become a citizen.”
Mr. Martinez spoke over the phone during some downtime at work. He said he planned to head to the polls when his shift ended for the day and vote for Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and Kamala Harris.
The last four years have been tough for Mr. Martinez. His father died of COVID-19 earlier this year, he said, and he has seen multiple friends and family members get detained or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“My reason for voting this year is I’m standing up for my Latin people who don’t have a voice,” he said. “I’ve lived through what they have. I know the hardships of being undocumented, and being profiled just because of your skin color.”
Nick Corasaniti in Philadelphia
What I’m watching: the split in Miami-Dade County. Democrats were getting worried about early voting turnout in the Democratic stronghold as the election drew closer.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:21 p.m. ET
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Voters at the Urban League polling location in Omaha, Neb., on Tuesday. Credit...Calla Kessler for The New York Times
OMAHA, Neb. — Last week at his rally in Omaha, President Trump singled out Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska with terse marching orders for helping him win what could be a crucial electoral vote in the state’s second district.
“You better get me on Omaha, you understand that?” the President said before a cheering crowd of thousands, turning to Mr. Bacon, a Republican.
On Tuesday, Mr. Bacon was trying to do just that, holding signs and rallying voters. As he cast his own ballot at a church in suburban Omaha, a people lined up outside, observing social distancing, waiting until an elections worker called them inside.
The President called Mr. Bacon on Saturday to reinforce his rally night command, according to the Representative. “‘Work hard,’” Mr. Bacon said the President told him. “All we can do is the best I can,” Mr. Bacon said in an interview on Tuesday. “If I was a lemon, I’ve squeezed every last drop of juice out of my brain. I’ve given it all I’ve got.”
Across Omaha, lines at polling places were shorter than in past days. Lined up were people like Ann Roth, 57, a white voter who said God told her Mr. Trump was going to win, and Happy Sadjo, 47, a Black man who immigrated from the West African nation of Togo and called Mr. Trump an “American dictator.”
In North Omaha, a largely Black area, armed men clad in tactical gear surrounded a polling place, near the site where in the 1920s, Ku Klux Klan chased out the family of Malcolm X after he was born. Leo Louis II, the executive director of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, where the precinct was located, said the men were there to provide security and protect voters, not to intimidate them.
Earlier this summer violence broke out in downtown Omaha after protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd and a white bar owner fatally shot a Black man.
“We’ve haven’t seen racism like this for years,” said Cedric Turner, who was in line there to cast his ballot for Mr. Biden. “That guy,” he said, speaking of President Trump, “ruined the country.”
For all the differing opinions here, a coming together occurred on Highway 370 south of Omaha, where the city thins out into suburbia.
As political sign-wavers stood on a nearby street corner, a dog ran into traffic and was on the loose, weaving back and forth between speeding cars. A half-dozen people stopped their vehicles in the middle of the highway and got out for a pell-mell chase on foot.
After about 15 minutes, the group surrounded the quivering white dog, which had lodged itself underneath a horse trailer. As a crowd watched, a man crawled on his belly under the trailer and nabbed the terrified, screeching animal.
“See?” one woman said as she walked from the scene. “All of America doesn’t hate each other.”
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:18 p.m. ET
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The Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department said they arrested an armed man Tuesday who returned to a polling place after being banned from the site earlier in the day.
The man, who was wearing a Trump hat, combat boots and a visible sidearm, unnerved Democrats who were gathered for a rally near the polling site, at the Oasis Shrine Temple in Charlotte, N.C. The mayor of Charlotte, Vi Alexander Lyles, and Representative Alma Adams were among those attending the rally.
The police identified the man as Justin Dunn, 36. They said in a statement that he voted at the site but “continued to loiter” afterward, prompting a call to the police “regarding Dunn possibly intimidating other voters.”
Mr. Dunn was asked to leave by a supervisor at the polling place and was banned from returning, the police said. He left but later returned and was arrested and charged with second-degree trespassing. Openly carrying a firearm is legal in North Carolina.
“There was no civic purpose for this guy to be walking around open-carrying a weapon in a heavy voting precinct on Election Day,” said Sam Spencer, a senior adviser to Ms. Adams’s campaign. “Clearly this sort of voter intimidation goes against everything that our country stands for, and we should be spending all of our energy helping people vote, not making polling places more threatening and more daunting than they already can be.”
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:17 p.m. ET
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President Trump at a rally in Waterford Township, Mich., on Friday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Kathleen Skeins hadn’t voted in 30 years. But on Tuesday, she cast a ballot for President Trump.
“I’m frightened of the other guy getting in,” she said about Joseph R. Biden Jr. as she stood outside a polling place in a recreation center. “I don’t think that he’s fit to run,” she added.
Mr. Trump visited Waterford Township on Friday. Ms. Skeins, 51, was not able to attend the rally, but she was excited about the effort he had been making in the area.
She said that over the past four years, Mr. Trump had been “straightening out” government corruption. “To see the changes he has made, even with how much people fight him — he has gone up against so much, and he’s doing great,” she said.
Oakland County, which includes Waterford, illustrates the political metamorphosis that has swept through many of the nation’s suburbs. With a population of about 1.2 million people northwest of Detroit, the county was once reliably Republican. But Barack Obama carried it by 14 percentage points in 2012, and two years ago, it heavily backed Gretchen Whitmer, the state’s Democratic governor.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:08 p.m. ET
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Great Falls, Va.Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Brooklyn, N.Y.Andrew Seng for The New York Times
Washington D.C.Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
Columbus, OhioMaddie McGarvey for The New York Times
Manhattan, N.Y.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Our photographers spotted some tiny people at the polls. So, of course, they took their pictures.
Nov. 3, 2020, 4:01 p.m. ET
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Election workers sorting absentee and mail-in ballots at the Lackawanna County Government office in Scranton, Pa., on Tuesday.Credit...Robert Nickelsberg for The New York Times
PITTSBURGH — Pennsylvania is closing out its first general election with mass mail-in voting, and nearly 85 percent of Democrats returned ballots they requested, and close to 75 percent of Republicans did so.
Democrats requested more than twice as many mail ballots, a surge originally driven by the pandemic, and which then became politicized when President Trump groundlessly scorned mail voting as prone to widespread fraud.
There have been many anecdotal reports of voters’ problems receiving the ballots they requested or being able to track whether they arrived at elections offices.
Steve Ramsey, a voter in suburban Philadelphia, said he, his wife and their adult daughter deposited their ballots in an official drop box on Saturday. As of Tuesday morning, they could not confirm the votes were received. Mr. Ramsay called it “quite disconcerting” and said the election office in Delaware County told him that he could go to his polling place and cast a provisional ballot.
“But the whole reason I voted early was to avoid going to the polling location,’’ Mr. Ramsey said. “So the online status system intended to improve voter confidence is actually undermining my confidence.”
Rich Fitzgerald, the executive of Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, said mail voting had been smooth overall, even though an early mistake had to be corrected in which thousands of voters were sent the wrong ballot.
He was expecting a surge in turnout, which could benefit Joseph R. Biden Jr., who closed out his campaign in Pittsburgh on Monday night.
Jeremy Peters in Birmingham, Mich.
What I’m watching: The Senate results will say a lot about how well Trump is doing in big battlegrounds. If Thom Tillis can keep it close in NC, that’s a good sign for Trump.
Nov. 3, 2020, 3:57 p.m. ET
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The Washington National Cathedral reopened to the public on Tuesday for the first time since March.Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The autumn sun, low in the sky, pierced through the giant stained-glass windows of Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday morning, and splashed jewel-toned light in red, blue, and green patches onto the cold stone floor.
Inside, for nearly one tenth of a mile down the cavernous nave toward the altar, wood chairs stretched in columns, each spaced ten feet apart. For the first time since the pandemic shut down this city, the church doors opened.
People came as they were, one by one, in pairs, as families or friends. In the air above them, lining the aisle three stories high, hung the flag of every state and territory of the United States. And at the altar, clergy took shifts reading through the Psalms, out loud, in order and on repeat.
When the clock struck each new hour, the priests paused with an Election Day prayer.
“As the people of this nation decide the future of our life together, we pray for all seeking elected office and their families, for the safety of all voters and poll workers, and for the protection of all ballots cast,” one said. “Help us now and always to find new ways to work together, to mend our divisions, that we may create your kingdom on earth.”
Errub Killip, a nurse, and her husband, Ernest, who is retired from the Coast Guard, stepped out into the bright sun outside. They had driven an hour from their neighborhood near Baltimore when they heard the church would open.
“We came today to pray for peace, for a better president, to put it bluntly,” Ms. Killip, 52, said. “These four years were important because they revealed everything.”
Maybe in four years, people will respect and listen to each other, she said, maybe the country will be more peaceful, “a better one than this.”
Two sophomores at American University studying international relations, both atheists, came to the Cathedral together.
“I had a lot of election stress and anxiety,” Kira Riegelhuth, 19, said. “It’s a calming presence, even though I’m not religious.”
Her friend, Anna Berkowitz, 19, hoped that one day government leaders would reject hate, and embrace climate protection policies.
“My teenage years have been characterized by me not being very proud of my country,” she said. “I hope that in the coming years we actually see change for the better.”
Two longtime friends from Northern Virginia, both military widows who had volunteered at the Cathedral for decades, reflected on what the church meant to them, at such a moment. The last time they had been inside was for the funeral of a friend, just days before the pandemic locked down the city.
“It’s where we come back to,” Joyce Halverson, 84, said as she held back tears. She clutched her phone, with an “I Voted” sticker on the case. “We want a sense of honor and respect from the White House. It sets a tone.”
Sherry Brown, 81, worried about what the threats of violence might mean for her daughter, who is gay. “I don’t want the hate stirred up,” she said. “I just hope for peace to return.”
Nov. 3, 2020, 3:56 p.m. ET
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MIAMI — Few places might be more scenic to vote, or more threatened by the rising seas, than the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens on Biscayne Bay in Miami, a city that long ago accepted that it would have to combat climate change in order to survive.
So it was perhaps unsurprising that voters on Tuesday named science as a top issue for them, referring not only to climate change but also to the coronavirus pandemic. Infections tore through South Florida during the summer and are starting to rise again.
“The environment,” began Mike Kolikof, 57, before listing his other concerns. (Among them: “human rights, women’s rights, corruption.”)
“I want people that are like-minded on science and listen to Ph.D.s and the experts,” said Mr. Kolikof, who voted for Joe Biden.
Mr. Kolikof and his wife drove from Maine to Miami, where they spend the winter, to vote. They rented a trailer so they wouldn’t have to stay in any hotels along the way and arrived in Miami on Monday night.
Both wore a mask to vote. Donna Kolikof, 68, also wore a face shield. She had requested an absentee ballot but chose not to use it.
“I like the feeling of voting in person,” she said.
Nov. 3, 2020, 3:39 p.m. ET
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Dawson Garcia and Laurelle Lund, voting in Thornton, Colo., said they supported Mr. Trump’s push to reopen the economy.Credit...Jack Healy/The New York Times
THORNTON, Colo. — The coronavirus upended everything for Dawson Garcia and Laurelle Lund, a couple trying to start their lives together in this middle-class suburb of Denver. Mr. Garcia’s mother was seriously ill for three weeks. Ms. Lund lost her coffee-shop job. The couple’s dreams of buying a starter home this year were dashed.
On Tuesday, they walked into the Anythink library here and cast votes in favor of the president who had presided over the country’s response to the pandemic. Both Mr. Garcia and Ms. Lund supported President Trump’s push to reopen the economy, taking a fatalistic view that the virus had become so embedded in the country’s bloodstream that Americans had to learn to cope.
“It’s rough right now,” Mr. Garcia, 25, said. “People not knowing where they’re going to get their money, getting laid off. We can’t stay locked down.”
Tuesday was Mr. Garcia’s first time voting, and he said that he and Ms. Lund had no hesitation about choosing Mr. Trump, even in a state that has been tilting more Democratic.
“He can help us much more in the next four years,” said Ms. Lund, 26.
Because so many voters in Colorado use the state’s universal mail-in voting system, there were few long lines outside polling stations around metro Denver on Tuesday.
“Pretty smooth,” said Stephen Armas, 31, who recently moved to Colorado with his wife and their two young sons.
Both Mr. Armas and his wife said they voted for Mr. Trump. He said that a former coworker had committed suicide after being laid off during the pandemic, and he worried that Mr. Biden would impose new restrictions that could take the country back to last spring’s lockdowns.
“We cannot function as a society if we remain indoors for 24 hours,” he said.
Nov. 3, 2020, 3:39 p.m. ET
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A Secret Service Officer stands guard behind a supplemental protective barricade outside of the New Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on Tuesday.Credit...Tom Brenner/Reuters
President Trump’s campaign has set up two election night “war rooms” in the White House complex, raising questions anew about the intermingling of the governmental and the political in the Trump administration.
One war room is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House, campaign and White House officials confirmed. White House officials also said there is a separate, smaller room in the White House building.
The use of government property for political purposes has been a recurring practice of the Trump administration over the past year. Mr. Trump held the final night of the Republican National Convention on the South Lawn of the White House at the end of August, after plans were repeatedly altered because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the final months of the race for president, Mr. Trump has also increasingly relied on political appointees and government agencies to bolster his re-election campaign.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a statement that the war room “needed to be in close proximity to the president and there is no expense whatsoever to American taxpayers for the use of a room in the EEOB, where events like prayer services and receptions for outside groups frequently occur.”
“Every piece of equipment, including Wi-Fi and computers, was paid for by the campaign, and no White House staff is involved,” he added. “The arrangement has been approved by White House counsel.”
Previous administrations have monitored elections from the White House, although some of have been mindful of avoiding having campaign staff involved.
For instance, according to a person involved in the operation, when former President George W. Bush ran for re-election in 2004, his team had a setup in the White House residence with a screen allowing officials there to monitor campaign data. It was approved by the White House Counsel’s Office.
But in that case, campaign staff were not present, and officials involved had to demonstrate they’d worked a certain number of government hours in order to participate, the person involved said.
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