At seven in the morning this Tuesday, local time (six hours more in mainland Spain), the line of voters waiting at the doors of the Episcopalian church of St Luke & The Epiphany, in the heart of Philadelphia, gave the signal. back to the block “I have never seen such a crowd, I don’t remember anything like it in previous elections,” explains Marcia, coordinator of the congregation’s volunteers who help organize the movement of voters abroad. Inside the two voting rooms, the lines at lunchtime reached the patio, and Marcia laments that there is no longer any pizza or hardly any coffee left to entertain the visitors. “It is a joy to see this influx, democracy is this: exercising the right, and the duty, to vote,” continues the woman, an African American, from the most populated city in Pennsylvania, the most decisive of the seven states that will decide who is the next president (or president) of the United States.
At the exit of the temple, there is a somewhat tense division of opinion. The presence of Lee and Sara, two New Yorkers who have come to Philadelphia as volunteers for the Republican campaign, and who wave a banner of the Trump-Vance tandem, irritates the spirits of Democratic voters, who express their disagreement with onomatopoeia or gestures of displeasure such as arms in blades. Until John Clark, a middle-aged businessman, comes out and congratulates the women, of Asian origin and former Democratic voters until 2016, “for their bravery.” Clark declares himself a “convinced Republican, a lifelong Republican.” “I don’t see a contradiction between the old Republican Party and Trump, although his speech may sound exaggerated at times. As a businessman, I know that you cannot waste time on talk, you have to go directly to the problem, solve it without wasting time, and that is what Trump did during his presidency. I don’t want to think about the damage it would do to this country to have Kamala Harris in the White House: there we have Biden’s four years of inflation as proof,” he explains.
Unlike the obvious irritation of the Democratic voters who pass by them, other Republicans—the church is in a blue (Democratic) neighborhood—take off their masks when they see the banner of the two women. Like Monk, a young African-American who claims to be a “reporter and soldier” and claims to have fallen off his horse, in terms of voting preference, during his stay in Ukraine, whose motivation he cannot specify. “I went to report on the ground, but hey, a soldier is always, above all, a soldier.” Monk says he discovered in Ukraine that the United States has not lost anything in other people’s wars, “just what Trump says, that’s why I voted for him: neither Ukraine nor Gaza are our concern.”
Just as the soldier-reporter concludes his improvised course on geopolitics, Imad, a young Palestinian with a family in Lebanon, approaches. Like many of his friends and family, he has chosen a third option, Jill Stein’s Green Party. “I cannot in good conscience support Democratic policy in Gaza and Lebanon: they are supporting genocide. I’m not the only one here in Philadelphia, also people my age without family ties to the Middle East, decry Democratic support for Israel. Even if it pays Biden’s bills, this support will not come for free to Harris. Furthermore, I am clear that he would be equal to or worse than Biden when it comes to defending Israel,” he says.
Two streets away, a lively band walks through the streets asking for last-minute votes for Harris; US electoral law allows proselytizing even on voting day. Mary Hawaz, a 32-year-old teacher, does not need convincing, as she voted early in the morning at the Chinese Christian Church in Chinatown, also in the center. As in previous elections, she has done so “very convinced” by the Democrats, she even attended Kamala Harris’ campaign closing rally the day before, “in an atmosphere of serene, sensible optimism and confidence, because here in Pennsylvania the result will be close.” ”. “I have the feeling that Kamala is going to win, of course in Philadelphia she is going to sweep, I have more doubts about Pittsburgh because it has a more complex demographic composition, and I fear the rest of the State will lean towards Trump, except for the Hispanics in Allentown and Reading, and not all.”
A danger to the United States
On the way to the polling station, where an amateur DJ from the neighborhood entertains the voters’ wait, Hawaz points out the importance of the vote of the African-American community in the city – she is of Kenyan-Ethiopian origin, but she feels like one of the black people from Philadelphia—“because voting for Trump is crazy, it is a danger for people of color like me, for women like me, for the LGTBI community, for the children from a poor neighborhood that I teach, who will have no prospects future if he returns to the White House… Trump is a danger to the United States and also to the world.” Her boyfriend, “Belgian originally from Morocco who has just acquired citizenship [estadounidense] He has also voted for Harris; “This is the greatness of this country, the greatness that Trump does not want to see because it destroys his lies.”
A small queue has formed at the polling station that those responsible for the church manage diligently. In seconds, someone has removed a poster of Donald Trump characterized as Terminator that hung from a neighboring gate. Voter registration is seamless, and so is their distribution to one of the four voting booths. At the close of election day, the voting machines—the entire process is electronic, from registration to voting—will be moved to the city’s Convention Center, in front of which a large platoon of police officers on bicycles stand guard. “It is a procedure closed to the press,” warns an officer.
In the plaza of the imposing Philadelphia City Hall, a stone’s throw from the Convention Center, three African-American women from the BMV Civic Action Fund group distribute information and encourage those left behind to register, request to vote by mail, find the voting center “on the spot.” vote that corresponds to them and vote, above all vote so as not to waste a single vote, as Kamala Harris requested the day before at the campaign closing rally. The website BlackMenVote.org (black men vote) also subscribes to the call, another important fishing ground for votes in which Harris hopes to fish.
The day passes without notable incidents, with fluidity in the queues and sustained and constant attendance of voters. Only a fallacious statement from the Republican campaign has attempted to tarnish the process, denouncing that four delegates from their party “were illegally expelled” from one or more voting centers (the statement is not precise), “which constitutes a crime.” With the city practically taken over by journalists, neither the local media nor the main agencies have reported any incident, and the complaint seems to be due to the attempt, not at all disguised, to sow doubts about the transparency and legality of the process in Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia the count will be delayed, which increases the possibility that Republicans will raise new objections.
