Harris or Trump? Americans Make Their Choice

Photo: Charles Krupa Associated Press Voters in Dixville Notch, a hamlet lost in the New Hampshire forests, cast their ballots Tuesday at midnight, as is their tradition.

Aurélia End – Agence France-Presse and Camille Camdessus – Agence France-Presse in Washington

Published at 6:42 a.m.

• United States

It will, inevitably, be a historic result: America decides on Tuesday whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will enter the White House, at the end of a campaign of unprecedented tension, undecided until the last minute.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. local time on the East Coast of the United States and millions of people will add their votes to the more than 82 million ballots already cast early or sent by mail.

It is impossible to know whether it will take hours or days of counting to decide between the 60-year-old Democratic vice president and the 78-year-old former Republican leader, whose personalities and visions could not be more different.

At their rallies, they are apparently two Americas irreconcilable disagreements that have been pouring in over the past few weeks, with each side convinced that the other will lead the country to disaster.

“If she doesn’t win, we’re screwed. Totally. Donald Trump is going to ruin everything. He’s out of control,” worries Robin Matthews, a 50-year-old community leader who came to hear Kamala Harris speak in Philadelphia on Monday night.

But for Ruth McDowell, Trump “is the one who’s going to save this country.” The 65-year-old administrative assistant, who came to the Republican’s final rally in Michigan, says she’ll be “very sad for (her) grandchildren” if the vice president wins.

Kamala Harris called her rival a “fascist.” Donald Trump hammered home that she was “dumb as a rock” and that she was going to “destroy” the country.

Neck and neck

On Tuesday at midnight, Dixville Notch, a hamlet lost in the forests of New Hampshire on the northeastern border of the United States with Canada, launched the vote as is traditional. Like the polls, its six voters were unable to decide between the two candidates: three votes each.

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The verdict of the ballot boxes will in any case be historic.

That is, America will send a woman to the White House for the first time. Either she will send back the populist tribune, convicted in criminal court and the subject of numerous prosecutions, whose first term (2017-2021) had led the country and the entire world into an uninterrupted series of convulsions.

The latest polls give the two adversaries almost equal in the seven crucial states, those which, in this indirect election, will give the Democrat or the Republican the sufficient number of electors to reach the threshold of 270 out of 538, synonymous with victory.

In an attempt to convince in just three months of campaigning, Kamala Harris has focused on a message of protecting democracy and the right to abortion, aimed at women and moderate Republicans alike.

The Democrat, born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, is organizing her election night at her former university, the historically black Howard University in Washington.

Donald Trump will be in Palm Beach, Florida, his home state.

The billionaire has replayed the same tune in this campaign as in 2016 and 2020, presenting himself as an anti-system candidate who is close to the people, the only one capable of saving a country ravaged, according to him, by migrants and galloping inflation.

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Drones, Snipers

This Tuesday concludes a stunning race, marked by the abrupt entry into the race of the vice president in July, replacing the aging President Joe Biden, and by two assassination attempts against the former Republican president, who has been criminally indicted four times.

What happens next remains a great unknown.

Both sides have already filed dozens of lawsuits, while two out of three Americans fear an outbreak of violence after the vote.

Some polling places have become fortresses, guarded by drones and with snipers on rooftops.

Election officials have also been trained to barricade themselves in a room or use a fire hose to repel potential intruders.

In the federal capital Washington, metal barriers surround the White House, the Capitol and other sensitive sites. A large number of downtown stores have boarded up their windows with wooden boards.

The images of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the seat of the American Congress, remain fresh in everyone's minds.

Nothing says that the country will be shaken by similar violence.

Donald Trump has, however, already laid the first stones of a new protest, accusing the Democrats at meeting after meeting of “cheating like hell.”

And the Democratic camp said it “expected” the Republican to declare himself the winner prematurely, as he did in 2020.