Hope and fear shape the minds of voters when they cast their votes

After Justin Jones left work early Tuesday, the professional truck driver voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential campaign. But he didn't have a good feeling about his choice.

“Trump is dangerous, he’s unhinged,” said Jones, 33, outside his polling station in East Point, Georgia. “Harris needs to establish more dominance, I don’t want to feel like I’m sorry for voting for her.”

Immigration was on his mind: Jones said the border needed to be secured, an issue he thought Harris should take more seriously. But he couldn't bring himself to vote for Trump, even though he agreed with him on the economy and immigration. Jones described the former president as a “strange person” who posed a threat to democracy. But he also worried about Harris' competence.

“It's like trying to run the New York Yankees,” Jones said of Harris leading the country. “I mean, I know a lot about baseball and stuff, but there's a lot that goes into managing a professional baseball team. I’m pretty sure she knows politics and is tough on crime, but this is the leader of the free world!”

Stickers lie on a table at a polling station in Atlanta.

(Brynn Anderson/Associated Press)

Jones was among tens of millions of Americans who went to their local polling stations on Tuesday.

Amid deep polarization among the country's citizens following the January 6 insurrection and the COVID-19 pandemic, law enforcement officials braced for threats against poll workers, violence at polling stations and intimidation of voters – and prepared for what would happen , if this were the case the final ballots would be cast.

“I’m terrified,” Amy Trachtenberg, 72, said after voting for Harris in her downtown Philadelphia high-rise.

“I remember what it felt like that night in 2016,” she said, recalling when it became clear that Trump was defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. If the former president is re-elected, “I know he’s going to be a lot worse off and people are going to suffer.”

The retired social worker spoke on a clear and balmy morning in Philadelphia as workers made their way into the city during rush hour with stickers reading “I Voted.” Lines in downtown precincts were full, and people who had been inundated for months with out-of-town organizers and advertisements could speculate on the results on their cellphones, anxious to see the contest's conclusion.

Justin Jones voted Tuesday in East Point, Georgia.

(Jenny Jarvie/Los Angeles Times)

But there was an underlying fear – not just of the outcome but of what it would say about the character of the nation.

“I don’t want to hope,” Trachtenberg said. “Part of me thinks, you know, a black woman will never be elected in America. Nobody talks about it.”

Trachtenberg said Harris did everything he could to win. “People talk about these things all the time that are just baked in. And that’s why I wonder what’s baked into America.”

In the red-colored suburbs of Fayette County, Georgia, about 20 miles south of Atlanta, Danette Corcoran, a 67-year-old bus driver, voted for Trump because she believed he represented common sense.

“We just need to change things and fix things,” Corcoran said. “Democrats can’t do that.”

Corcoran, a former Democrat who was born and raised in Minnesota, said she believes her former party dropped the ball on the economy and immigration. After voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, she was upset when he left the White House. She blamed voter fraud — and Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — for Trump's loss.

Corcoran said she looks forward to having the former president back in the White House and hopes he will hand Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the reins of health care.

“I don’t like his personality — he’s a little brash,” she said of Trump. “But he can fix things and fix things. When he was president, I felt safe in my country. With Biden and Harris, I watched the world implode. Prices have skyrocketed.”

Corcoran said she was confident Trump would win. But if he loses, she said, she trusts he would challenge the results and rail against the “good old” system.

“I hope he has a seizure,” she said.

Corcoran's biggest concern was a Democratic insurgency: A Trump victory, she said, would lead people in the cities to loot and loot.

She also didn't like the idea of ​​a Californian as president.

“California is moving in and we don’t like it,” she said. “We pay the high prices.”

More than 83 million Americans had cast their votes as of Tuesday morning in the election that will decide not only whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Trump wins the White House, but also which party takes control of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives takes over.

In Phoenix, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes assured Arizonans that election officials were prepared for a long but efficient Election Day.

“As far as I know right now, everything is going as smoothly as possible at Arizona State,” Fontes told reporters Tuesday morning at a library in Phoenix.

Aside from a rare minor problem — an election official forgot to bring a key to open a polling place around 6 a.m. — Fontes said polling stations across the state were operational and open until closing at 7 p.m. local time.

The first results, to be released Tuesday evening, will take into account early votes — an estimated 55% of the total, Fontes said. Casting ballots on Election Day and the final day or so will take longer, and official results from the state are expected to take 10 to 13 days, Fontes said, although media forecasts may come much sooner. He added that the state has already seen record early voting.

Hours before the polls opened, the presidential candidates delivered their final election speeches to voters.

Harris held her final campaign rally on Monday night, 106 days after President Biden decided not to seek re-election, with a heavy dose of celebrity and sought to bring back the joy that characterized her first weeks on the road.

Outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on the iconic steps that Sylvester Stallone walked while training in the “Rocky” film franchise, the vice president implored a raucous crowd to make a campaign plan.

“One more day, just one more day in the most consequential election of our lives,” she said. “And the momentum is on our side.”

Trump continued to describe the country at his last rally as a disaster, threatened by a flood of dangerous criminal immigrants and suffering from major economic problems, for which he blamed Harris, whom he called a “radical left-wing lunatic who destroyed San Francisco.” designated. ”

He also railed against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“She is a corrupt person, she is a bad person. Devilish. She's a bad, sick, crazy girl. Trump said, before seemingly stopping himself from finishing the word.

“Oh no,” Trump said as his supporters laughed. “It starts with a B, but I won't say it. … I want to say it.”

Although voters fear the election is over, it is unlikely that the nation will know who the next occupant of the White House is after the polls close Tuesday night, unless polls showing an incredibly close election are wrong . If it were a very close election, it would take days or possibly longer for the next president to be named.

On Tuesday night, “everyone needs to take a breath, have some patience, have a glass of wine and get up the next day and do it all again,” Rick Hasen, a professor of campaign finance law at UCLA, told The It's time for a story about the patchwork Vote counting rules that could delay the result. “Maybe we’ll know what the answer is by the end of the week. Unless it’s a glitch.”

Mehta reported from Washington, D.C., Bierman from Philadelphia, Jarvie from East Point, Georgia, and Pinho from Phoenix. Times staff writers Brittny Mejia in Las Vegas and Kevin Rector in San Francisco contributed to this report.