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Gary Kauffman says he’s not easily scared. So, when men waving flags of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, pass his home in downtown Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he stands on the front steps and waves a banner on behalf of Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala. Harris.
“Sometimes I yell at them. They yell at me, ”says Kauffman, 54.
Still, Kauffman is keeping a closer eye on who they are and what they’re wearing as Election Day approaches. Tension has been mounting in his city, better known as the holy ground of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Recently, it has become a focus of furious clashes between Trump supporters and liberal protesters. Kauffman has seen some of Trump’s supporters carrying guns.
“If there are weapons, I’m a little more cautious,” he said Monday.
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Americans are not used to worrying about violence or security before elections. It’s a luxury provided by years of largely peaceful voting, a recent history of fairly orderly demonstrations of democracy. But after months of disease, disruption and unrest, Americans worry that Election Day will turn into a fever pitch.
Maria Altaffer / AP
Voters mark their ballots during early voting in Brooklyn, New York. Persistent and fierce partisanship and mounting anger feel like a recipe for conflict at the polls for many voters in the United States.
With Election Day next week, voters can point to a lot of evidence behind the anxiety. More than 226,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus and cases are increasing across the country. A summer of racial injustice protests and sometimes violent clashes has left many nervous. Arms sales have broken records. Trump has asked his supporters to control the vote and has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power or explicitly condemn a white supremacist group.
There was an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and another series of violent protests this week over a police shooting of a black man in Philadelphia.
“Human beings don’t do well with uncertainty, and there has been a lot of uncertainty this year,” said Mara Suttmann-Lea, an assistant professor of government at Connecticut College who conducts research on voting. “I’m absolutely seeing elevated levels of anxiety … and it’s a more general existential anxiety: ‘What is the state of our democracy?'”
Maria Altaffer / AP
Absentee ballots are seen in a locked box during early voting in New York.
Those concerns have shown up in polls. About 7 in 10 voters say they are looking forward to the election, according to an AP-NORC poll this month. Biden supporters were more likely to say so than Trump supporters: 72% to 61%.
For some, the concerns are a vague sense of impending trouble that could take many forms: conflict at a polling place, protest over result, protest over no result, a conflagration dividing Americans by now familiar divisions.
“You can feel it in the energy,” particularly on social media, says Cincinnati voter Josh Holsten Sr., 42. “There are a lot of additional stresses that don’t necessarily have to be there.”
Holsten says he’s voting for Trump, but believes neither the president nor Biden are doing enough to calm people down. The car salesman has even stocked up on food, water and bulletproof vests for his family, in case the elections cause something bad.
Election and law enforcement officials are also preparing. The FBI and local officials in several states have been conducting drills and establishing command centers to respond to election-related unrest.
Election officials are training poll workers on how to reduce the escalation of conflict and making sure they are prepared on the rules on poll monitoring, intimidation, and voter harassment.
“The procedures have always been there. We just never had to use them, ”said Ellen Sorensen, an electoral judge in Naperville, Illinois, outside Chicago. Maybe this time we can. I do not know.”
A group called Election Protection Arizona says it intends to train hundreds of people at the polls, including a de-escalation guide in case of clashes.
The Rev. Joan Van Becelaere, executive director of Ohio Universalist Unitarian Justice and part of an effort to keep the peace, said the virus has fueled fear and division among Trump supporters and others.
The groups, he said, are “extreme places of tension that we really don’t want to find at these polls.”
Linda Coan O’Kresik / AP
Jill Biden, left, and Gov. Janet Mills after a rally Tuesday in Maine.
Millions of Americans are voting despite concerns. More than 62 million people have already voted in the United States, and more than 20 million of them cast their votes in person.
An August poll by the Pew Research Center suggests that more Americans see higher-than-usual stakes in the 2020 presidential election. Twenty years ago, only half of voters said it really mattered who won. In August, 83% expressed this opinion.
For some, that sense of urgency, combined with fierce partisanship and anger, feels like a recipe for conflict.
“November is going to be scary because both sides are not going to budge,” said Bob Stanley, 66, a longtime Republican and Trump supporter from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Stanley expressed a hope shared by Republicans and Democrats: “I hope it’s an overwhelming majority, or there will be trouble.”
Maria Altaffer / AP
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, center, lines up to cast his early vote. He waited more than three hours in line to vote.
Another Johnstown resident, Fran Jacobs, a 76-year-old Biden supporter, expressed similar concerns about whether the outcome would be clear, whether the people would be calm, and whether the world would view the United States as a functional democracy.
“I have never been afraid for the country. I always thought we would make it. We always get something out. And I’m really scared this time, ”she said, looking up at the sky. “Everything is in your hands, I know.”
