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      Voting proceeds smoothly across US despite fears of unrest

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      Across America millions of people went to the polls amid an election campaign fraught with anxiety over the prospect of voter intimidation and the chance of civil unrest after a historically divisive election.But as polls started to close on the east coast of the US, reports from across the country reflected a day of peaceful voting with only sporadic reports of incidents of intimidation or misinformation or technological problems with voting machines.The leader of a group of 42,000 legal volunteers deployed for the election said so far there had not been “major, systemic problems or attempts to obstruct voting”.Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said early voting, voter education efforts and earlier litigation had made for “a relatively smooth election day across the country”.The committee operates the Election Protection hotline, which provides information and assistance to Americans who encounter problems while voting. Clarke said there was an increase in complaints about voter intimidation and electioneering compared to past elections, but those problems were at a smaller, less intense scale than had been expected.“While we have seen these complaints, in many instances they are lone wolfs, individuals, maybe two people, but not large groups that would otherwise have a stark chilling effect on the electorate,” Clarke said. “And I think many voters this season have come out determined.”Clarke cautioned that this could be the “calm before the storm,” and that the committee was bracing for issues over whether absentee ballots were properly handled and counted in the coming days. More

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      in US Politics

      Eerie quiet in Washington as capital digs in for a tempestuous election night

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      Downtown Washington on election day had the feel of a city digging in for a siege. The White House and the Treasury were surrounded by a high steel fence and in the surrounding blocks, businesses and apartment buildings had covered every square foot of exposed glass with plywood.
      The wealthier and more cautious had laid down sandbags to hold wooden buttresses that in turn held the plywood in place, and the city centre began to empty out in the mid-afternoon. The grid of streets and avenues were eerily free of traffic.
      On Black Lives Matter Plaza, a legacy of the last skirmish in the nation’s capital, an advance guard of the expected army of protesters had taken up positions by the White House fence, which was festooned with anti-Trump placards.

      Derek Torstenson was sitting against the barricade encouraging those around him to vote without fear of intimidation.
      He had crossed the Potomac early from Virginia, as a protective measure. After the confirmation of Donald Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, to the supreme court in October, a moment of triumph savoured by the president, his supporters tore down all the Black Lives Matter posters on the plaza, and Torstenson wanted to make sure it did not happen again.
      “I’m here to protect the fence,” he said. “It’s not just a fence any more. It’s about memories of black people and about Trump also.”
      He saw no way Trump would vacate the building behind him voluntarily and so he expected a battle of popular wills to be played out in the court, and on the streets.
      “I think Joe Biden will win. But Donald Trump always said, live on the news, that he is going to refuse to transfer power. He already has his lawyers around in case that happens, and that’s why we are all going to gather here tonight, so that we can let him know that if you lose – you lose. You can’t challenge an election. That doesn’t happen.”
      A few hundred metres south-east along Pennsylvania Avenue, some more modest barriers had been set up outside the old US post office building which since 2016 has been the Trump International hotel, the other Washington hub of a family empire spanning business and politics with no real divisions between the two.
      Trump International is where foreign dignitaries and US business executives come to stay if they are seeking an audience with the president. It is where ambitious administration officials hold their office parties, helping bolster the Trump Organization.
      In recent months, an opposition group has projected the climbing death toll from coronavirus against the hotel facade and it is likely to be targeted again, as a symbol of the open corruption of the Trump era in the aftermath of the election.
      Trump had been planning to watch the results from the hotel, but he cancelled that plan, instead summoning 400 of his closest supporters to the White House for a party that, whatever the outcome of the election, is bound to become the latest in a string of coronavirus super-spreader events hosted there.
      The White House and Trump International are two outposts in an overwhelmingly hostile city – only 4% of DC residents voted for Trump in 2016 – which are destined to be flashpoints if the battle for power drags on after the election. Depending on how that battle ends, they could provide the setting for Trump’s last stand on the political stage. More

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      in US Politics

      Women march against Trump and Republicans in major US cities

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      Thousands of mostly young women in masks rallied on Saturday in Washington DC and other US cities, exhorting voters to oppose Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in the 3 November elections. The latest in a series of rallies that began with a massive women’s march the day after Trump’s January 2017 inauguration was playing out during the coronavirus pandemic. Demonstrators were asked to wear face coverings and practice social distancing. Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, opened the Washington event by asking people to keep their distance from one another, saying the only superspreader event would be the recent one at the White House. She talked about the power of women to end Trump’s presidency. “His presidency began with women marching and now it’s going to end with woman voting. Period,” she said. More

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      'I feel pride': incarcerated residents of Washington DC register to vote for first time

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      On a Wednesday afternoon earlier this month, Tony Lewis Sr, a former Washington DC drug dealer in his 32nd year of a life sentence, didn’t imagine anything exciting was in the cards. Then a prison counselor at the correctional institute in Maryland told him his voter registration form had arrived.“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he told his son, Tony Lewis Jr, via text message. “I feel pride today, I feel like a real man, a citizen of my community and city.”Lewis Sr’s joy stemmed from legislation passed by DC’s council in July, extending the right to vote to incarcerated residents for the first time, a right that only Maine and Vermont currently allow. The DC Board of Elections says it has sent registration applications to 2,400 people in prison since the law passed, allowing them to vote in November’s presidential election. That number is lower than the 4,500 DC residents who were believed to be incarcerated earlier this year, a discrepancy likely in part due to prisoners being released because of Covid-19.But pinpointing an exact number is also difficult for DC officials because, unlike states, the nation’s capital doesn’t have its own prison system, meaning its incarcerated residents are scattered in over 100 federal facilities across the country.“We have no information other than the information we’ve been provided,” said Alice Miller, the executive director of the DC Board of Elections. “This is [the number the Federal Bureau of Prisons] gave us. This is what they identified.”Despite these complications, advocates of voting rights for felons have hailed DC’s new legislation as hugely significant in the precedent it sets in reversing the suppression of votes of Black Americans like Lewis Sr, nationwide. US restrictions on voting rights for felons are among the world’s harshest, and many were created to disenfranchise Black Americans after they gained voting rights in the Jim Crow era.According to the Sentencing Project, an advocacy and research organization, Black American adults are over four times more likely to lose their voting rights than other Americans, and overall, 2.2 million Black Americans are banned from voting. More

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      'I will fight!': mourners' vow at supreme court vigil for Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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      On a pavement across the street from the supreme court, school teacher Amanda Stafford chalked the words carefully: “That’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”It was a quotation from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a justice more renowned for her dissents than her majority opinions, including on the Bush v Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election. Ginsburg died from pancreatic cancer on Friday aged 87, the newest jolt to an angry, divided and fragile nation.On Saturday night, as summer succumbed to the chill of autumn, thousands came to mourn her at a vigil outside the court in Washington. Some made speeches. Others sang songs. More joined hands or laid flowers and candles. Stafford paid tribute in chalk.“I wanted to show words that are empowering at a time when a lot of people are feeling worn out,” the 31-year-old from Alexandria, Virginia, explained. “As a woman in a country getting ever more divided, it’s important to come out and make a stand for someone who made this her life’s work.”What is the state of American democracy that one single woman passing away feels like a harbinger of hopelessness?Amanda StaffordLike many others, including numerous mothers and daughters, Stafford was hit hard by the loss of the feminist lodestar.“I broke down crying and went to sit in a park, sobbing. I called my closest girlfriends and we cried together. What is the state of American democracy that one single woman passing away feels like a harbinger of hopelessness? We’re already in a pandemic and losing her felt like the end.”Stafford’s homage was one of many outside the court, built in the 1930s in classical style to project the full majesty of the law, its 16 marble columns illuminated as two US flags flew at half mast. “RIP RGB,” said one banner in the rainbow colours of the LGBTQ movement. “For my daughter,” said another, simply.“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time – Ruth Bader Ginsburg” was written on cardboard sign amid a sea of pictures, candles and flowers. “She kept theology off our biology” was among the acknowledgements of Ginsburg’s support for reproductive rights. More