Divided and weary, America faces uncertainty
Already on edge over pandemic, many voters fear the threat of clashes following election day
WARREN, MICH.— She could have dropped her ballot at the post office, but she wasn’t sure if she should trust the mail. She considered slipping it into the secured box outside city hall, but what if something happened? A fire maybe.
This year has delivered so many shocks that anything seemed possible. So 58year-old Diane Spiteri trudged up three flights of steps to place her absentee ballot straight into the hands of the clerk in this battleground suburb of Detroit.
As election day closes in, Americans are exhausted from constant crises, on edge because of volatile political divisions and anxious about what will happen next. Their agony is not in deciding between President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden; most made that choice long ago. Instead, voters arriving in record numbers to cast early ballots say basic democratic foundations feel brittle: Will their vote count? Will the loser accept the result? Will the winner repair a sick and unsettled nation?
“I just can’t wait until the whole thing is over. And I think it’s long from over, even after Tuesday. There’s just so much anxiety,” said Spiteri, who voted for Biden.
“I am hoping that there wasn’t too much damage done in the last four years that it can’t be undone.”
Here in Macomb County and across the country, some have obsessively tracked polls to soothe their nerves, or bought guns, or researched moving abroad, or retreated to a cabin in the woods. Tension has ratcheted up, as each side believes the other is threatening to usher in the end of America as we know it.
“Our country is in a state of chaos,” said Roberta Henderson, as she deposited her ballot in Sterling Heights, Mich. She voted Trump in 2016, but she grew tired of his divisiveness. This time, she voted for Biden.
A country already uncertain about its future amid a worsening pandemic and a national reckoning on racism is now contemplating the added threat of clashes in the wake of election day.
In Texas, vehicles festooned with Trump flags swarmed a Biden campaign bus. Weeks ago, a group of men were arrested for allegedly plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor. Gun sales have skyrocketed. Trump refused to promise a peaceful transfer of power.
The president has warned that if he loses crime would consume the streets and freedom would buckle under political correctness.
U.S. authorities were planning to reinstall a “non-scalable” fence around the perimeter of the White House, designed to make it impossible for any election protesters to get inside the White House compound, NBC News reported Monday.
“If we let that other guy in, all hell is going to break loose,” said Dan Smith, 53, in Norfolk, Va. He’s supporting Trump because he’s concerned about “law and order.”
On the other side of the aisle, too, people are grappling with political tension.
Near Chicago, Phyllis Delrosario, 73, said her mood vacillates from excitement to depression. She researched moving to another country if Trump is re-elected. “I just feel like I’m this raw exposed nerve all the time, and the anxiety of all this and the chaos of ‘what’s he going to destroy next?’ ” she said.
As a Black woman, Charlotte Moss, 64, of Oakland County, Mich., had become increasingly concerned about emboldened militant groups. She had never owned a gun, but about a month ago, bought one. She took a class at the Detroit chapter of the National African American Gun Association.