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Clinton vs. Trump: Voters Have Their Say on Election Day Clinton vs. Trump: Voters Have Their Say on Election Day
(about 4 hours later)
How are voters feeling? We sent more than two dozen New York Times reporters out across the country. They found resignation, enthusiasm, gloom, joy, fear and excitement. In Harmony Township, Pa., west of Pittsburgh, early voters were rewarded with cinnamon rolls from Oram’s bakery, on sale to raise money for the volunteer fire department. Culinary Union members in Las Vegas knocked on doors to get out the vote. And in Exeter, N.H., voters arrived early at their polling place to avoid lines — only to find that scores of others had the same idea.
INDIANAPOLIS — After an acrimonious campaign that included talk of mass deportation and religious tests for immigrants, a group of Muslims gathered here Tuesday to reflect on the toll. Across the country, Americans cast their ballots on Tuesday, putting an end to this extraordinarily divisive election. Some said they voted to show their hope in the future. Others bemoaned the harsh tenor of the campaign. Yet others spoke of political divides even in their own families.
“My son, he asked me just last night, ‘Are we going to get kicked out of the country?’” said Aliya Amin of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana. For many, the day was a time to reflect on the meaning of it all. “It’s scary,” said Laura Alcon, a 47-year-old bus driver waiting in line at a gas station in Fountain, Colo., just south of Colorado Springs. “I don’t know what our country is going to turn out to be.” Disgusted by the options for the nation’s highest office, she wrote in a protest choice in early voting: Mickey Mouse.
Ms. Amin said that her son, who is 8, was worried about a potential Trump presidency, and that she had to assure him they were American citizens and were not leaving Indiana. Jose Umana, a 49-year-old airline pilot in Coral Gables, Fla., took a longer view of the political season. “Some people think the future of our country is being determined today,” he said. “I don’t see it that way. I think the future of our country is about each one of us, not one person in charge. You can’t wait for someone to determine your future. You just have to try to be the best you can be.”
“This election cycle, unfortunately, Muslims have been treated like a tumor in the body of the United States,” said Rima Shahid, executive director of the alliance. “And that’s not the case. We are a vital organ.” — MITCH SMITH Below are snapshots of the day.
HOUSTON — Kimberly Mace and Emilio Hernandez have never met, but their paths crossed at a polling place here, and they shared milestone: It was their first time voting. Robert Richardson walked out of a county government building in Zebulon, N.C., a small town east of Raleigh, with his “I Voted” sticker, and its stylized American flag, affixed upside down on his camel-colored work coat.
Ms. Mace is 54. Mr. Hernandez is 18. She voted for Donald J, Trump. He voted for Hillary Clinton. He put it on that way on purpose, he said: universal sign of distress.
Mr. Hernandez called voting a big step. “It let me know I’m an adult,” he said. Race relations in 2016, Mr. Richardson said, were “the worst I’ve ever seem them.” Muslim refugees were coming to the country “unvetted and uninoculated,” and he wondered if it was part of a Muslim plot to take over the world.
Ms. Mace said she felt like crying in the voting booth, and tears welled up in her eyes as she spoke. “I don’t really know how to explain it,” she said. “It’s because I can do it” — MANNY FERNANDEZ “I think it’s already been rigged and the people out here’s been just going through the motions,” he said, nodding toward his polling place.
LAS VEGAS — In the swing state of Nevada, where elections often hinge on turning out the vote in Las Vegas, the Culinary Workers Union has the biggest and most powerful ground operation. The 57,000 members, mostly women and Spanish-speaking immigrants, are overwhelmingly motivated this year by their dislike of Mr. Trump, with whom they have been in a union dispute for more than a year. Mr. Richardson, 56, owned a flooring company for decades until the recession dried up the work. He closed it in 2010. He was a registered Democrat his whole life until this year, when he switched to the Republican Party.
“For me this is a personal fight,” Geoconda Arguello, the leader of Local 226 here, shouted as she stood before more than 400 members as they prepared to spend the day knocking on doors and driving members to the polls. “I came from Nicaragua with nothing,” she said. “I came to this country because I knew it was where the law and people were respected. We’re not going to let Trump come and change it.” — DAVE PHILIPPS He voted for all of the Republicans on the ticket, including Donald J. Trump, though he had his reservations about Mr. Trump. “I think this will be our last chance to get somebody in there to shake it up enough to get people to pay attention,” he said. RICHARD FAUSSET
KING COUNTY, Wash. — Here in the most populous vote-by-mail county in the nation, the technology of sorting ballots, verifying signatures and recording votes was moving at a high-tech blur. Anjali Phillips is a temp worker in the bottleneck of the operation, where human touch still matters: She pulls each ballot from its envelope. The work is repetitive, to say the least, with the 100 openers going through 90,000 ballots on a busy day. Patricia Estrada rose before the sun on Tuesday, said her prayers and then put water to boil for some coffee to start her day. She woke her youngest child so he could get ready for school. She turned on the radio to listen to the morning news.
But the work is also exciting in its way, she said, a glimpse at the voices of voters, recorded in the little black-ink ballot ovals. “It might not be interesting to other people,” Ms. Phillips said. “But I enjoy it,” she added. “It makes you appreciate the value of each vote.” — KIRK JOHNSON These were the routines of every other morning, though this was a morning like no other for her. This morning, the 48-year-old homemaker was voting for the first time.
RIVERTON, Utah — In the conservative suburbs south of Salt Lake City, Jared and Melanie Steere squished together on the sofa with their four kids to read from the Book of Mormon, had a breakfast of fresh-baked apple-carrot muffins, and then set out to send a rebuke to the Republican candidate for president. Forty-five years ago, her mother, an American citizen, took her from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to Phoenix. But Ms. Estrada had never become a citizen. Voting, she said, “was something I didn’t care for, it didn’t matter.” This year, she said, it did. She became a citizen in the spring and on Tuesday voted for Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Steere, 41, had supported Republican candidates all his life – an old Bush sticker is on his high-school yearbook. But this year, the family’s home is adorned with four signs for Evan McMullin, a long-shot conservative independent running for president. His Mormon background and anti-Trump stance has given him a devoted following among many disenchanted Utah Republicans. “I believe in equal opportunity, doesn’t matter if you’re green, purple, brown,” she said. FERNANDA SANTOS
“Technically I’m still a Republican — but I’m not,” Mr. Steere said as he stood outside his home on Tuesday morning. “This doesn’t look or feel like me anymore.” — JACK HEALY Children wearing “I Voted” stickers while bounding through the streets of Springfield, Mo., with their parents. A flier for an election night concert bearing a cartoon portrait of Mrs. Clinton with a red X over her face. A chalkboard outside a bar that read: “It’s Nov. 8. Don’t forget to vote. Then come in to relax.”
PHILADELPHIA — Leroy Caple woke up at 5 a.m. on Election Day in the Philadelphia recovery house where he has lived for the past four months, with a busy day of therapy sessions ahead. But Mr. Caple, 59, a disabled maintenance worker who has struggled with alcoholism for 32 years, has never missed an election, and he certainly wasn’t going to sit out this one – not with Mr. Trump on the ballot. These are the symbols of Election Day in a relatively small town in the conservative Ozarks. Unlike the hustle and bustle of Election Day in swing states or big cities, this city, population 165,000, exuded Midwestern quaint.
“I don’t like nothing he stands for,” Mr. Caple said. Children had the day off from school, and so parents and their children formed a line outside of a movie theater for matinee shows. Emily Gifford, 41, sat over burgers and fries with her two daughters and husband after they had cast their ballots.
Philadelphia is Clinton territory – there are seven times as many registered Democrats as Republicans here. Mantua, one of the most blighted neighborhoods in the city, is a tight-knit community on the other side of the railroad tracks from downtown. Dewayne Drummond, 36, the local Democratic ward leader, was at the polls early, handing out sample ballot cards with Mrs. Clinton’s name on top. “It’s going to be like this all day,” he said, watching the line as it grew. “What’d I tell you guys today is important for you to do,” Ms. Gifford asked her daughters before answering herself. “You should do two things in life: Go to church, and vote.” JOHN ELIGON
So it was a surprise, at around 8 a.m. Tuesday, when a local man everyone calls “Bird” showed up with sample Republican ballots bearing Mr. Trump’s name. There was confusion, and a minor kerfuffle, as some voters threw the Trump ballots into the trash; one crumpled up her ballot and tossed it at the man, who gave up and left. Susana Loli, a casino housekeeper and member of the Culinary Union in Las Vegas, subtly jammed her foot into the open front door of a fellow member in the northern suburbs.
Through it all, Mr. Caple was feeling good. “Have you voted yet?” she said. “It’s very close by, at the high school. You want a ride there now?”
“I’m wonderful,” he said after casting his ballot. “One hundred fifteen days without a drink. I’m here, and my vote matters.” — SHERYL GAY STOLBERG A woman in her pajamas on the other side of the barely opened door said she was not going to vote until 3 p.m. Ms. Loli removed her foot, made a note on her clipboard and said “O.K. great, we’ll be back at 3.”
HOUSTON — For decades, Election Day was a time of mixed emotions for Myriam Marin, an engineer at a global company. She came to the United States 35 years ago from Argentina, and because she was not a citizen she never voted. She felt guilty. Ms. Loli has been working full time for the union, made up mostly of immigrants and women, since September. Teams have registered voters, driven people to early voting and spent hours trying to persuade undecided or unmotivated union members to vote for Mrs. Clinton.
“I didn’t become a citizen, by choice, until Obama,” Ms. Marin said. “I just wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to become a citizen just because it gave me certain benefits. I didn’t feel patriotic enough. I didn’t feel like I belonged here.” “The American dream — if you work hard you can get it,” said Ms. Loli, who immigrated from Peru in 1990. She walked to the next of 121 front doors she planned to knock on.
She voted for Mrs. Clinton, and said later that said it felt good not to feel guilty on Election Day. But she also found it hard to feel the same patriotism she felt in 2008. “I had lots of terrible arguments with family and friends,” she said. “I think this whole thing was a mess.” — MANNY FERNANDEZ “I have a house, I have a pension, my kids went to college. We made it. I don’t want to lose that. We have to fight to keep it. Trump? We’re scared of him.”
ZEBULON, N.C. — Robert Richardson walked out of a county government building in this small town east of Raleigh with his “I Voted” sticker, and its stylized American flag, affixed upside down on his camel-colored work coat. He put it on that way on purpose, he said, as a universal sign of distress. DAVE PHILIPPS
Race relations in 2016, Mr. Richardson said, are “the worst I’ve ever seen them.” Muslim refugees, he said, are coming to the country “unvetted and uninoculated,” and he wondered if it was part of a Muslim plot to take over the world. He thought the billionaire activist George Soros might be inciting the violence at Trump rallies. Democrats like Donna Brazile seemed to be blatantly cheating this election season, he said. By 6:30 a.m., several dozen people had lined up to cast ballots at the Coral Gables Public Library in a well-to-do suburb just south of Miami. Voters, mostly dressed in workout pants and T-shirts, clutched their coffees and their cellphones, while some of them still debated their choices.
It felt as if the fix was in in America in 2016. “I think it’s already been rigged and the people out here’s been just going through the motions,” he said, nodding toward his polling place. Person after person used the same refrain: “Lesser of two evils.”
But like millions of worried, anxious Americans, he voted. Mr. Richardson, 56, a white Southern Baptist, owned a flooring company for decades until the recession dried up the work. He closed it in 2010. He said he was a registered Democrat his whole life until this year, when he switched to the Republican party. “I think it’s going to be one of those impulse things,” said Michael Lopez, a cybersecurity consultant.
He voted for all of the Republicans on the ticket, including Mr. Trump. Political correctness, he said, and the Democrats’ focus on social issues — like whether transgender people should be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice, a big issue in North Carolina this year — seemed to him like a calculated diversion from matters of substance. FRANCES ROBLES
“I think this will be our last chance to get somebody in there to shake it up enough to get people to pay attention,” he said. — RICHARD FAUSSET Lissa Matson, a physician, wanted to beat the crowds to the polls, so she arrived at the designated location — the gym of a technology school in Exeter, N.H. — a few minutes before the polls opened at 7 a.m.
PHILADELPHIA — Shakye Jones and Olivia Kirby, black women who are both 24, study public health at Drexel here. Both are Bernie Sanders backers, but they turned out for Mrs. Clinton. So had at least 100 others.
“It’s trying to actually be happy about a woman, as opposed to thinking about what I don’t really want in a president,” Ms. Jones said. The line of voters, clad in hats and sensible coats to ward off the morning chill, snaked through the parking lot as the climbing sun turned autumn leaves the color of honey.
Some of her friends were planning to stay home, which she finds outrageous. Voting, she said, “is something people died for.” — SHERYL GAY STOLBERG “Thought I would be here before the crowd, but I guess not,” Ms. Matson said.
CHICAGO — Sweat gleaming across her forehead, Novella Lott rushed up to a polling place on the Near West Side looking frantic. But soon the line was moving quickly, and the first voters trickled out.
She was on her lunch break from her job at a company in the Loop that provides caregivers for the elderly and ill, and had taken the #60 bus to race out to vote. Now she was worried there might be some mix-up with her registration – would it be at her old address or here? And what about the lines she had heard about on television? “I’m anxious for change,” said 61-year-old Paula Perry after casting her vote for Mr. Trump and other Republicans here, including Senator Kelly Ayotte, who is in a tough re-election fight.
“I’m not going to skip this!” said Ms. Lott, 57, who wore a royal-blue business suit and running sneakers. “No! No! No! I don’t care if I’m late getting back from lunch. They’ll have to wait. I’m coming one way or another.” Bill Batal, 63, a retired financial analyst, chose all Democrats. “She has the most experience,” said Mr. Batal, a registered Democrat, of Mrs. Clinton. “The other guy doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
She said: “It’s all been in the dirt, this whole campaign. I’ve been doing a lot of praying about it. A lot of praying. I’m voting for Hillary, but I put my trust in God.” Mr. Batal said he wondered when the nation would ever feel unified.
— MONICA DAVEY “I hope it’s going to bring the country together,” he said, “but I’m afraid it’s so polarized, it’s going to be very difficult for whoever wins.” JESS BIDGOOD
Election Day had been a time of mixed emotions for Myriam Marin, a 60-year-old engineer at a global company. She had come to the United States 35 years ago from Argentina, and because she was not a citizen, she never voted. She felt guilty.
“I didn’t become a citizen, by choice, until Obama,” said Ms. Marin, at the polling station at Crockett Elementary School in Houston.
“I didn’t feel like I belonged here,” she said. “It took that long for me to get where I am now. Obama was probably my inspiration.”
On Tuesday, after she voted for Mrs. Clinton, she said it felt good not to feel guilty on Election Day. But she also found it hard to feel the patriotism she felt in 2008. “I had lots of terrible arguments with family and friends,” she said. “I think this whole thing was a mess.”
MANNY FERNANDEZ
The cinnamon roll entrance poll in Harmony Township, Pa., was pointing to a big turnout in battleground Pennsylvania.
By 8:05 a.m., the 40 dozen salad-plate-size rolls from Oram’s bakery for sale outside the voting booths to raise money for the volunteer fire department were all gone.
P. J. Shotter, a voter who arrived at the polling site just after the last roll was sold, was downcast. “This is my reward,” she said.
Ms. Shotter said she still had not made up her mind but was leaning toward Mrs. Clinton. Both her sons, 18 and 23, were Trump supporters. The household has been a battleground, she said.
“I like Hillary because she’s a caring individual,” she said. “Like I just told my younger son, she’s getting a bad rap, especially with the emails. It’s like a witch hunt.”
A volunteer packing up the cinnamon roll table took pity on Ms. Shotter, handing her one from a private stash.
TRIP GABRIEL
Elvira Flores arrived at the voting booths from her home in south Los Angeles with her 2-year-old grandson in her arms. She had immigrated from Guatemala more than 20 years ago.
“He’s been attacking us,” she said of Mr. Trump. “But little by little, we have fought back. Those of us who can are becoming citizens and voting for those who cannot. We want to have opportunities.”
“I have hope that the country will get better for people like us,” she added. “These have been hard times, we all know people who have been deported or have lost their jobs. But voting, this is one thing I can do to show I am hopeful.”
JENNIFER MEDINA
In the playground in Lafayette Hill, Pa., just north of Philadelphia, Tara Turzi watched over her 6-year-old twin sons on Tuesday at midday and lamented the tone of the campaign.
“I’ve had to constantly shut the television off,” Ms. Turzi said as she tried to corral the energetic boys. “They’ve been exposed to some really terrible stuff in those ads, on both sides.”
Ms. Turzi, 43, who teaches English composition at a local community college, voted for Mrs. Clinton; her sister is voting for Mr. Trump. They don’t talk about it. She is white, but teaches many students who are minorities. The election is all the students talk about.
“Those who do support him feel very strongly,” she said. “Those who don’t are sort of outraged.” She encouraged all of them to vote.
Ms. Turzi herself thought she might vote Republican this year and turned to Mrs. Clinton only because Republicans nominated Mr. Trump, who she thinks “stands for racism and sexism.” And she liked the idea of a woman in the Oval Office.
“I’m excited that my boys are going to see that, so young, and be raised in a world where anybody can be president – for real.” SHERYL GAY STOLBERG