Virus, raging in battleground states, looms over Election Day
CLEVELAND >> They voted from cars and at outdoor tables. They stood in lines spaced far apart. They strapped on masks and pumped sanitizer into their palms. All across America Tuesday, voters cast ballots in a presidential election in which the uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic was both a top issue and a threat.
As millions of Americans turned out to vote, the nation was facing a rapidly escalating pandemic that is concentrated in some of the very states seen as critical in determining the outcome of the presidential race. From Wisconsin to North Carolina, infections were on the rise as the nation barreled toward 10 million total cases.
The virus that has left millions of people out of work and killed more than 230,000 people in the United States will be one of the most significant challenges for the winner of the presidential race, and it loomed over every chapter of the election, down to the final ballots.
In the last hours of campaigning, President Donald Trump — who, regardless of the election outcome, will be in charge of the nation’s response to the pandemic for the next 21/2 critical months — was at odds with his own coronavirus advisers and suggested that he might fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert. Former Vice President Joe Biden told voters in a final pitch that “the first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump.”
In Virginia, voters’ temperatures were taken at some polling sites. In Wisconsin, the mayor of Wausau, a small city where cases are spiking and tensions are high, issued an order banning guns at polling places. And in Texas, an election judge did not wear a face covering, prompting accusations of voter intimidation and such intense heckling that the judge called the local sheriff to report that she felt unsafe.
The pandemic, which drove record numbers of Americans to cast ballots early or by mail, rarely strayed far from voters’ minds.
“I just don’t want another shutdown,” said Rachel Ausperk, 29, a first-time voter who said she chose Trump in Ohio, a highly contested state that reported more new coronavirus cases Tuesday than on any day since the nation’s outbreak began more than eight months ago.
The coronavirus outbreak shaped nearly every aspect of the 2020 election and only intensified as voters went to the polls. The U.S. shattered records in recent days, reporting more than 85,000 new cases a day, nearly double the caseload at the start of October. Deaths have increased slowly to more than 800 daily, more than in early July but far fewer than in the spring. Though the country is conducting more testing, that does not fully account for the increase in cases.