Siddharth Hariharin is not registered to vote in Massachusetts — but that didn’t stop the 23-year-old from taking democracy into his own hands on election day.
When the recent New Jersey transplant noticed that people couldn’t find the door to the polling site at Boston City Hall, he spent hours in the cold pointing would-be voters in the right direction.
“I want to wake up tomorrow knowing I did everything I could to help people make their choice,” he said.
Many voters emerged from COVID-seclusion to cast their ballot in a bitterly partisan national election. After an election season steeped with worry about the spread of the coronavirus, the economy and job-losses, as well as rising fear that the election results could be contested, some voters showed up at election sites with a fierce determination to have their say at the ballot box. Others waited dutifully in long lines that coiled around schools, libraries and other polling sites for more than 30 minutes in the cold for their chance to vote. And social media was awash in the people proudly displaying their “I voted” stickers on both sides of the aisle.
Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin had predicted record turnout and nearly half of all registered voters in the state had already cast mail-in or absentee ballots three days before the election. Another 1.3 million are expected to vote on election day.
Those are voters like Janet Meany of Back Bay.
“I needed to put that ballot in the box myself, to get rid of [President Donald] Trump,” Meany said as she left the voting booth at the Boston Public Library on Tuesday afternoon.
Casting her ballot in person allowed her to excise the “stress of that idiot in the White House” who mishandled the coronavirus and inhumanely separated migrant children from their parents at the border, she said.
On her heels was Lisa Koch, a Trump supporter who reserved her sharpest criticism for Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California. Calling her “insanely narcissistic” and an opportunist, Koch said that she could not stomach the thought that she would be next in line for the presidency if Biden is elected.
“I’d much rather do it in person,” she says. “It feels more satisfying.”
That sense of election fervor could be felt throughout the state, even though Massachusetts is overwhelmingly blue and a world away from the battles in heavily contested states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas. More than 100 million Americans voted early and votes cast in person are expected to represent a significant minority of all votes nationally.
In Massachusetts, the group Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston, which trained more than 200 volunteers to watch polls and answer election questions, said voting lines were excessively long in Mattapan, Dorchester and Hyde Park with wait times in excess of 40 minutes.
The group also said at one polling site in Lawrence, voters who had not received mail-in ballots were being told they could not vote.
Brighton resident Evan Scorpio said he and his wife requested mail-in ballots due to their concerns about COVID-19. Their mail-in ballots never came, he said. The couple cast their votes at the Alexander Hamilton School in Brighton Tuesday, saying this election was too important to miss.
“Luckily, it was really quick — no line,” Scorpio said.
In Provincetown, across the street from Town Hall, Sean McNulty and his brother Tim, the owners of the Lobster Pot restaurant, offered free hot chowder to voters on election morning.
"We love our town. We're ready for a new beginning," said Tim McNulty, dressed entirely in blue and unwilling to state his voting preference outright. "Today's voting day, and this is in the spirit of democracy and community."
The cold temperatures also didn’t stop a steady flow of voters from hitting the polls in Franklin, a town of 30,000 in the southeastern corner of the state. More than half of registered voters have cast their ballot early, but not resident Lawrence Allers.
He said he wasn’t concerned about whether his mail-in ballot would be counted or the recent resignation of the town clerk during the primary.
“We just gotta be patient, pay attention and do the right thing,” Allers said. “I think we’ll move on from this and get everybody back to normal and shakin’ hands and having dinner together.”
It wasn’t clear if he was talking about the coronavirus or the presidential election. Those two issues have overshadowed other key votes, including a U.S. Senate race that pits veteran Democrat Sen. Ed Markey against a Republican challenger, attorney Kevin O'Connor.
There are also two "yes or no" ballot questions asking voters to decide who has control over a car's wireless data and whether to adopt a ranked choice voting system.
Instead, voters were laser-focused on the next person to occupy the White House. Charles and Penny Garcia showed up at the polls at Stoneham Town Hall wearing matching American flag jackets.
"I'm here to vote for Trump," Charles Garcia said. "I'm 64. I only voted twice in my life. Once, four years ago for Donald Trump. And again today for Donald Trump. It's all I vote for."
He said he's supporting Trump because he says Trump is a real man, and politicians are liars. And he likened mailing his vote to putting $500 cash in the mail and sending it to yourself.
In Worcester, Martin and Amanda Gjoni's were hoping to teach their four-year-old son Benny that voting is vital to democracy. They took time-off from work on Tuesday to go to the polls as a family.
"We try not to sugar coat a lot of things with him," said Amanda Gjoni. "We like to let him know what's going on. We watch the news. He watches it with us. We explain it to him the best that we can. So he's not in the dark about a lot of things. He actually has a decent understanding as far as a four-year-old ...for what's going on in the world."
Benny said he is already thinking ahead to 2024, when he hopes the ticket includes "Spiderman."
Back at the Boston Public Library, 19-year-old Anna Rose Read and her mother, Clair Beard Read, cast their votes. The mother and daughter contracted the coronavirus last March, and Clair Beard Read, who is a medical doctor, said her symptoms still linger. She blames Trump for not doing more to stop the virus’ deadly spread.
“He’s so concerned with the effects of COVID on the economy, he refused to acknowledge how deadly it was,” she said.
Both women said they were concerned that Trump was undermining democracy by giving tax advantages to the wealthiest Americans while crafting immigration policies that punish poor children who cross the U.S. border.
Staying home, she said, was simply not an option.
Digital producer Meghan Smith, reporters Craig LeMoult, Carrie Saldo, Bob Seay, Marilyn Schairer, Esteban Bustillos and radio producer Amanda Beland contributed to this report.
