Americans went to the polls yesterday to decide whether to give President Barack Obama a second term or to replace him with Mitt Romney after a long, hard-fought campaign that centred on who would heal the battered economy and what role government should play in the 21st century.
From makeshift voting sites in East Coast communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy to the more typical voting booths set up in school gyms, libraries and town halls across the rest of the country, people began lining up before dawn to cast their ballots — collectively writing the ending to a bitter, expensive presidential campaign in which the candidates, parties, and well-heeled outside groups were on pace to spend some $2.6 billion.
At the polling place at the Elk’s Club in Fairfax, Virginia, outside Washington, DC, voters braved temperatures in the low 30s to stand in an hour-long line to vote at 7:00am, reports New York Times.
Obama cast his ballot on October 25 in Chicago — becoming one of more than 31 million people who voted early this year.
Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, were among the first voters yesterday at a polling place in Greenville, Delaware, Biden’s home state, reports Associated Press.
Smiling broadly, Biden waited in line with other voters and greeted them with a handshake. Outside, he sent a message to people across the country who may encounter crowded polling places. “I encourage you to stand in line as long as you have to,” he told television cameras.
The men on the GOP ticket each voted with their wives at their side yesterday morning in their hometowns — Massachusetts Governor Romney in Belmont, and Ryan in Janesville, Wisconsin — then headed to meet in Cleveland for some retail politicking at restaurants and other unannounced stops.
In a contest reflecting the nation’s deep political chasm, Obama and Romney ran dead even in final polls that hinted at a result rivalling some of the closest presidential elections in history.
The first polling results of the day in New Hampshire’s Dixville Notch did nothing to change that notion. It was a tie.
Obama and Romney each received five votes, reports CNN.
The town in the state’s northeast corner has opened its polls shortly after midnight each Election Day since 1960 – but yesterday’s draw was the first in its history.
In the morning, the president visited a campaign office in Chicago, where he called and thanked several startled volunteers in Wisconsin and then spoke briefly to the reporters who were travelling with him, congratulating Romney for having run a “spirited campaign.”
“I also want to say to Governor Romney, congratulations on a spirited campaign,” Obama said.
He was sure to observe his Election Day ritual of playing pickup basketball with friends and close advisers. The one time he skipped the tradition, he lost the New Hampshire primary in 2008.
Romney was asked on WTAM radio in Cleveland whether he agreed that voters always get it right in the end. “I won’t guarantee that they’ll get it right, but I think they will,” Romney replied.
Romney argued that Obama had his chance to help Americans financially and blew it. “If it comes down to economics and jobs, this is an election I should win,” Romney told Cleveland station WTAM.
With both sides keeping up the onslaught of political ads in battleground states right into Election Day, on one thing, at least, there was broad agreement: “I am ready for it to be over,” said nurse Jennifer Walker in Columbus, Ohio.
The forecast for Election Day promised dry weather for much of the country, with rain expected in two battlegrounds, Florida and Wisconsin. But the closing days of the campaign played out against ongoing recovery efforts after Superstorm Sandy.
Election officials in New York and New Jersey scrambled to marshal generators, move voting locations, shuttle storm victims to polling places and take other steps to ensure everyone who wanted to vote could do so.
In New York City, authorities planned to run shuttle buses every 15 minutes yesterday in storm-slammed areas to bring voters to the polls. In Ocean County along the New Jersey coast, officials hired a converted camper to bring mail-in ballots to shelters in Toms River, Pemberton and Burlington Township.
Election Day came early for more than a third of Americans, who cast ballots days or even weeks in advance.
An estimated 46 million ballots, or 35 percent of the 133 million expected to be cast, were projected to be early ballots, according to Michael McDonald, an early voting expert at George Mason University, who tallies voting statistics for the United States Elections Project. None of those ballots were being counted until yesterday.
The election played out with intensity in the small subset of battleground states: Colorado, Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Romney’s late move to add Pennsylvania to the mix was an effort to expand his options, and Republicans poured millions into previously empty airwaves there.
Source: The Daily Star
