US braces for possible election day violence as Harris, Trump deliver final pitches

Fear, suspicion, hope and bluster: All were on display Monday night as the US election campaign reached a crescendo, with Republican Donald Trump making a final pitch to supporters in Michigan and Democratic rival Kamala Harris looking to end on a high note in Pennsylvania.

At Trump’s final rally in Grand Rapids, the crowd of thousands was boisterous, convinced that his victory was inevitable, with some saying any other result would mean the vote had been rigged.

In Philadelphia, where Harris was preparing to host a star-studded rally featuring Lady Gaga and others, supporters said they were cautiously optimistic, and fearful of another Trump term.

With polls opening across the United States just hours after each of the candidates were due to speak late on Monday, both sets of supporters will have their answers soon enough.

More than 81 million people have already cast ballots in the 2024 election, or about half the number who voted overall in 2020.

More people voted early that year because of the pandemic. Still, several states have reported record levels of early voting because former President Donald Trump has urged Republicans to vote that way now.

‘Awful suspicious’

“If you look at the numbers of people, you look at the rallies, it’s crazy the support that Trump has,” said Mark Perry, 65, who had lined up in Grand Rapids.

“If it goes the other way, I think we’re gonna be awful suspicious,” he told AFP outside the 12,000-seat Van Andel Arena, where supporters had braved hours of rain, some perched on fold-out chairs.

Immigration tops the list of concerns for many Trump voters, inflation for others, while some defended abortion restrictions or an end to gender transitions for youths.

But no matter their stance on the issues, they share a deep skepticism that a Harris win could be legitimate, despite opinion polls consistently showing a dead-heat between the two.

“It would be very hard to accept,” said Jacob Smith, 41, an HVAC technician from the area, as his wife Danielle chimed in to echo his concerns.

Trump has ramped up claims of election fraud ever since his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden and ahead of this year’s vote, though no evidence of widespread fraud has come to light.

On the campaign trail, Trump has called recent migrants to the United States “animals” and likened the wave of immigration to an “invasion.”

Still, some immigrants say they will vote for him because they back his conservative stance on hot-button social issues.

Sam Nyambe, a 48-year-old who immigrated from Zambia, told AFP he supported Trump for his “Christian values,” especially on abortion.

‘He’ll ruin everything’

In Philadelphia, the steps of the city’s art museum were lit up in shades of royal blue, with a long queue snaking its way to the venue for Harris’s rally.

“I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m worried,” said Robin Matthews, a community organizer. “If she doesn’t win, we’re screwed.”

Matthews, who lives in the Pennsylvania suburbs that will be so crucial in deciding this key swing state in a knife-edge election, said she feared a second Trump presidency.

“He’ll ruin everything,” she said. “There’s no checks and balances anymore (if he is reelected).”

Her 16-year-old son Asher intervened to offer what he felt was at stake in this election: “The preservation of our democratic system.”

As a long campaign comes to an end, marked by extraordinary twists and turns in a country that appears more divided than ever, Yvonne Tinsley, a 35-year-old accounting manager, just “want(s) it to be over.”

She does not expect any political miracles from Harris, but says too much is at stake if former president Trump returns to power.

“I’m a Black woman in America, so unfortunately, all policies hit me different,” she said.

“Every Supreme Court decision or bad Republican policy, or bad Democratic policy, I get the short end of the stick.”

‘Convicted felon’

“It’s kind of mind-boggling that the race is so close, because he’s a convicted felon,” said Trish Kilby, a 60-year-old Harris supporter.

Trump has 34 felony convictions for crimes related to hush money payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election, and is awaiting sentencing.

On the campaign trail, the former president has painted his legal woes as the result of political victimization, accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing the law.

The convictions have not appeared to dent Trump’s credibility with his supporters.

Jeff Dickerson, a 70-year-old handyman from Bonita Springs, Florida, was at the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot where pro-Trump demonstrators attempted to block the certification of Biden’s victory.

“I’m just a die-hard Trump supporter,” he said, listing the flow of undocumented migrants along the southern US border as his top concern.

“I like everything that he’s done.”

The world is anxiously watching as the outcome will have major implications for conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s war in Ukraine, and for tackling climate change, which Trump calls a hoax.

The most immediate fear is that US democracy will buckle if Trump loses but refuses to accept defeat like he did four years ago, when his supporters stormed the US Capitol.

With Trump having narrowly survived an assassination attempt in July and police foiling a second plot, the fears of violence are very real.

Security precautions

In Washington, growing numbers of businesses and office buildings are being boarded up in case of unrest, while in other locations around the country, officials were taking a variety of measures to bolster security.

Many of the most visible moves could be seen in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election, states like Nevada where protests by Trump supporters broke out after the 2020 election.

This year, a security fence rings the scene of some of those protests – the Las Vegas tabulation center.

A defense official said on Monday that Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin and Washington state have current National Guard missions while Washington DC, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have troops on standby.

In Arizona, a similar metal fence has been erected at Maricopa County vote tabulation center in downtown Phoenix, a flashpoint in 2020 for rigged election conspiracy theories and threats against election officials.

County Sheriff Russ Skinner said his department will be on “high alert” for threats and violence and he has instructed staff to be available for duty.

“We will have a lot of resources out there, a lot of staff, a lot of equipment,” he added, noting deputies will use drones to monitor activity around polling places and snipers and other reinforcements will be on standby for deployment if violence appears likely.

He said “polarization” becomes more intense in the days after the election so law enforcement will remain on heightened alert and “there will be zero tolerance on anything related to criminal activity”.

Concerned about the potential for protests or even violence, several Arizona schools and churches that served as voting centers in the past will not serve as polling stations this year, a local election official told Reuters.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), which has over 400,000 members in Arizona, has offered several polling locations to fill the gap.

A dozen or so community leaders from across the state and from various political backgrounds and cultures have formed a committee to focus on stemming political violence, according to member Jane Andersen, an LDS church member and Protecting Democracy Specialist for Arizona at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.

The group says it is ready to tap into a broad network, including faith leaders, who can help spread factual information to counter misinformation-fueled unrest.

In the battleground state of Michigan in 2020, Trump supporters descended on the downtown Detroit convention hall and began pounding on windows as the counting of absentee ballots carried into a second day. Yellow bicycle racks this year lined both sides of the boulevard on which it sits.

Visitors must go through metal detectors and about 15 police officers are patrolling the cavernous hall. Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s chief operating officer for absentee voting and special projects, said police also are on the roof and surrounding the building. Eight days of early pre-processing of mail-in ballots have passed peacefully, Baxter said.

Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University in California who has researched threats against public officials, said the worst scenario would be Trump losing and not conceding defeat.

Rather than a repeat of the 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, he said conflict could be “dispersed, diffuse events across multiple locations” that would be more difficult for law enforcement to address.

Precautions stretch beyond the battleground states. Oregon and Washington state authorities have said they have activated the National Guard.

Back in Las Vegas, Faviola Garibay surveyed the security fence around the linen-colored building where Clark County officials tabulate the votes and where voters such as her can drop election ballots.

“The fencing, the presence of police here, it seems secure,” she said. “I feel safe voting.”