Midterm test for Trump
Voters go to the polls in an election that, for some, is ‘the most important of their lifetime’
CLARA Swallows pulled herself out of bed. Her aching back made her want to stay put, but the 74-year-old in Indiana had somewhere she needed to be: the polls.
More than 1000km away in Florida, Stephanie Kent suspended repairs to her home – flooded during Hurricane Michael – and drove 32km out of the way to circumvent a still-closed bridge just to cast her ballot.
Like Swallows and Kent, more than 30million Americans have voted in a midterm election expected to draw unprecedented numbers by the time polls closed yesterday. In casting their ballots for House and Senate races, voters will render a verdict on President Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure, deciding whether his 2016 election was a one-off or if his divisive style of governing will define the future of American politics.
Swallows and Kent voted from opposite ends of the political schism. Swallows was determined to help put Democrats in office to curtail Trump’s agenda, while 54-year-old Kent committed to Republicans as a show of support for him. But both agreed this election was among the most important of their lifetimes.
“I woke up in pain, but I said I’m going to get out and do this,” said Swallows, a former Republican who has never before voted in a midterm. She cast her ballot for all Democrats, citing Trump’s stirring of racial and political tension.
“I’m here to say that hatred is not going to win. We are not going to stand for it.”
Trump has sought to counter some of that rage toward his administration by stoking more anger among his base. In recent weeks, he’s put the spotlight on a caravan of Central American migrants fleeing poverty and violence that he calls “an invasion” of criminals and terrorists. He ran an advertisement about immigration so racially incendiary that three major cable news networks either refused to air it or decided to stop showing it.
Among some Republican voters, that message resonated.
“This whole thing with this caravan is pretty scary,” said Jennifer Rager, 55, of Bozeman, Montana, who approves of Trump’s plans to crack down on immigration. She cast her ballot to keep Republicans in power so the president doesn’t become a lame duck.
“It just feels like he’s really trying to do a good job of protecting our country, you know? I can’t wrap my head around why the other side is so unhappy and so terrified.” In St Louis, Susan Riebold, 53, said she supported Trump’s decision to send troops to the Mexican border – a move critics say is a political stunt.
Others expressed a sense of unease and sadness about the state of America’s political climate. The election comes just days after a series of hate crimes and political attacks, including the arrest of a man who mailed pipe bombs to Trump critics whom the president often derides as “evil”, ‘’un-American”, and “the enemy”.
Many voters said they saw the election as an opportunity to reject that kind of bombast.
“We’ve forgotten our decency. We’ve forgotten the truth,” said Morris Lee Williams, 67, an Army veteran and member of Zion Travelers Missionary Baptist Church in St Louis.
“We’re supposed to be a group of people, Americans, who are supposed to be that light in the world. Instead of a light, it’s turned into a nightmare.”
Civil engineer Pritesh Mehta also cast his early vote for those who would support the president. Mehta, who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, emigrated from India in 2000 and believes Trump is steering the country in the right direction, including with his immigration policies. Mehta came legally, he said, and he didn’t see anything wrong with vetting others who wanted to live in the US.
Uroosa Jawed is an immigrant, too. She relocated from Pakistan with her family when she was 5. Now 42 and a naturalised citizen living in Omaha, Nebraska, she has always considered herself an American. But over the past two years, as Trump has made sowing fear about immigrants the centrepiece of his presidency, she’s wondered whether her neighbours see her that way, too.
“I don’t feel despair,” she said. “I feel we’re on the precipice of change.”
Meanwhile, the US voting system also faces a test. Officials have been working for nearly two years to shore up the election infrastructure from cyberattacks by Russians or others seeking to disrupt the voting process.
But it turns out that many of the problems are closer to home. Early voting revealed a variety of concerns with voting and registration systems around the country – from machines that changed voter selections to registration forms tossed out because of clerical errors. Election officials and voting rights groups fear that voter confidence could be undermined if such problems became more widespread. |