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Kenneth Scarlett, who works in marketing, agreed. “The country needs to know, regardless of whether you are in a blue state or in a red state, where all its citizens are,” he said. “I want Trump to be repudiated in the strongest possible way.”
Lisa, a 50-something financial worker who declined to give her last name, said she, too, was willing to spend hours on the sidewalk to exercise her right to vote.
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“In 2016, too many people were complacent and did not go out to vote and there was an incorrect result,” he said. “This time we cannot allow that to happen.”
In the past, she had always considered herself an independent-minded centrist, sometimes a Republican voter, sometimes a Democrat.
“‘Republican’ didn’t used to be a bad thing … (but) recently it’s gotten pretty bad. So I’ll vote Democrats on the column.”
If you have to pay higher taxes under a Democratic president, he said, so be it. “I would choose the expensive over the bad.”
But like many others, Lisa fears violence could erupt after the election, whoever wins.
The NYPD has been preparing for weeks for the possibility of the demonstrations escaping into violence.
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Even for early voting, the police have been deployed to Madison Square Garden, as well as the other 80 voting stations open in the city from now until Nov. 1.
And city officials have announced that they are recruiting an Election Observer Corps to prevent any “intimidation” of voters.
There was no evidence of pro-Trump militants or agitators outside Madison Square Garden on Saturday.
Instead, it was a small group of left-wing activists, there to “encourage” voters, who were diverted by the police, who asked them to keep their distance, and not yell “Shoot Trump!” as did one of them.
French-American actor Timothee Chalamet, 24, said after voting that “we are in a democratic crisis in America. We have to vote.”
“I am here because I am trying to participate as everyone in saving this democracy. There are two people on the ballot: one person supports democracy, another does not,” he added, making it clear that for him Biden is the one who does it.
But what if the New York billionaire is re-elected, even after being rejected by his hometown?
For Laura Gillis, 65-year-old retiree, it would be proof that an American system that allows a candidate who receives a minority of the popular vote to become president, as Trump did in 2016, “has to change.”
But for Kenneth Scarlett, a Trump victory would not be the end: “Instead, we work harder next time; you don’t despair, you find out why and you work harder so that more citizens will see what you saw.” “
