On Tuesday morning, Washington, D.C.,’s gleaming downtown was braced for trouble—storefront windows boarded up with plywood, stone columns wrapped in plastic to thwart spray paint—but the streets were quiet. A pedestrian could cross the wide avenues without bothering to look for cars and pull down his mask to breathe the crisp fall air. Americans often forget how much violence has historically marred our elections, but never before have we had one where the Sweetgreens felt threatened.
Not to be outdone by the chain restaurants, the government had also beefed up security. Newly installed fences, reinforced by Jersey barriers, kept citizens out of an eight-block-by-four-block area from H Street to Constitution Avenue. The south side of the zone, in the shadow of the Washington Monument, was deserted save for joggers and dog-walkers, but on the north side, above Lafayette Square (where protesters were recently tear-gassed on orders from the Administration), a small collection of people was already starting to gather by mid-morning: tourists, students, foreign-media correspondents, people yelling about climate change, a flag-dance troupe. Through the fence, past some trees, you could just make out the White House in the distance.
A pair of teen-agers with green and red hair, Amichai Macil and Ashley Gonzalez, stood by the fence, where signs in support of Black Lives Matter and memorials to John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been put up in recent days. They had travelled into the District together, from Arlington, Virginia, and had made plans to meet up with a third friend, but weren’t sure if he was going to show. “His parents are a little sketchy with COVID and stuff like that,” Macil, who was holding a camera, said. “And also with what’s happened here before—all the violence. You know, he’s still seventeen. My parents are generally O.K. with it. I’d say they trust me. I’m not going to throw eggs or something like that at a police officer. I’m not that type of person. I wanted to come here and take photos. Just take it in.” Macil and Gonzalez planned to leave before it got too late in the day, and they knew that they’d have to be patient waiting for the results. “I don’t see the election being called until maybe four days from now,” Macil said. “I’m O.K. with chilling. That’s how it’s always been—it’s just, before, there’s been enough votes in, there’s not a lot of mail-in or other votes that have to be counted afterwards, for it to be decided.”
A few feet away, Carolina Ferrer and Pablo Reyes, television producers for Spanish and international news outlets, were talking logistics. They had flown in from Spain on Saturday and had a long day of live hits and segments to plan. “It’s an important day for the country, and the whole planet,” Reyes said. “Because, if there are serious riots in the U.S., that will spread to the rest of the world immediately. So we’re hoping that peace wins out.”
In front of the Hay-Adams hotel, Antonio Cabbagestalk was wearing a Members Only jacket printed with Nickelodeon characters and an American-flag pattern. He was waiting for his boss—they planned to set up a table selling political T-shirts and accessories a little ways up the street. Lately, Cabbagestalk said, they’d been mostly selling Black Lives Matter goods, but they’d sold Donald Trump merchandise, and they’d sold Joe Biden merchandise. Cabbagestalk, who is fifty-four, said he’d voted absentee, and that he’d found the process easy enough, but he declined to say who he voted for. “All I’m looking for is for them to do right by these people and do right by this country,” Cabbagestalk said. “Because this year, this country has gone through a lot. We’ve gone through a lot with the Black Lives Matter movement. We’ve gone through a lot with the coronavirus, and now we have the election. And it’s a lot. It’s a lot on the American people.”
