NEWTOWN, Pa.—Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, which stretches along the Delaware River north of Philadelphia, has earned a reputation for unpredictable voting outcomes.
Recently dubbed an “ultimate suburban bellwether,” Bucks is a place where Democrats have long outnumbered Republicans. Yet pockets of the county’s blue-collar Democrats had no qualms about defecting to Republican Donald Trump’s camp because his opposition to career politicians resonated with them.
Many are still loyal to the former president’s “Make America Great Again” principles.
David Fiori, who was handing out Republican-slate flyers to voters outside a polling site at New Life Christian Church in Newtown, said Bucks County “is a cross-section of people who moved from New York because it’s too expensive,” as well as lifelong residents.
The new transplants tend to lean Democrat. People who have lived here for decades tend to be staunch Republicans, he said.
‘Republican All the Way’
Rebecca Mack, 47, was among the first two dozen voters in line for the polls to open at the church at about 7 a.m. She started her day with a workout, then headed to cast her vote.
When asked which race stood out most, Mack said, “They’re all important.”
However, she said the race for U.S. Senate, between Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, is the one everyone is talking about. Mack said she would vote for Oz because of his pro-life and get-tough-on-crime messages.
“I’m against the criminality that’s happening in our country,” Mack said. “I’m voting Republican all the way.”
For her, however, abortion is the deal-breaker.
“I can’t imagine voting for someone who supports abortion—ever,” Mack said.
For Mack and other early-rising voters, casting ballots went quickly; she was out the door of the polling place about 10 minutes after it opened. Many voters emerged with baked goods in hand; the church regularly holds a bake sale during elections, Fiori said.
Oregon
For two moms in Oregon, the election is about the economy and crime.“Our state has turned into a [expletive], and that’s what’s motivating my vote,” 59-year-old Eugene school teacher Stephanie Bradford told The Epoch Times. “Eugene and Portland used to be beautiful cities where I felt safe walking around with my kids at night to go to a concert or show. But not anymore.
“Drugs are out of control and way too easy for kids to access, I can hardly afford to go out to dinner anymore because prices are so high. And I think about all the people who aren’t as lucky as me, who live paycheck to paycheck. There’s no hope if we continue on the path we’ve been on for the past two years.“
She isn’t alone in her thinking.
“With five kids, food costs and gas prices are killing us right now,” 39-year-old gig worker Candace Norton told The Epoch Times. “It’s tough driving my kids around for sports. Sadly, I see a lot of parents sending young kids on city buses because they can’t afford to drive them anywhere.”
Recently, she took a bag of McDonald’s burgers to a youth soccer game.
“My kids’ friends said we must be rich,“ Norton said. ”How sad is that?”
Arizona
In Arizona’s largest voting jurisdiction, voting got off to a rough start in Maricopa County as officials said approximately 20 percent of voting centers experienced tabulator problems. As a result, some voting locations experienced longer than expected wait times.At the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Mesa, lines wrapped around the church, and poll workers appeared to be short-tempered. When asked how the election was going, a poll worker told The Epoch Times that it wasn’t allowed on the property, even though official rules say reporting is allowed 75 feet from the voting location.
The lines were much shorter down the road at Love of Christ Lutheran Church, however, and poll workers clearly defined the area where media was allowed.
Helen Shara told The Epoch Times that voting was “pretty smooth,” and her wait time was approximately five minutes. Don Behrens, a maintenance worker for the church, said the voting location had stayed “busy,” but everyone seemed to be entering and leaving in an orderly fashion. When asked if he voted in person, Behrens replied that he voted by mail “a long time ago.”
At the Chandler Unified School District Office, wait times averaged an hour, voters told The Epoch Times. But that didn’t diminish Election Day enthusiasm. Mike and Karen Basson told The Epoch Times that in the past, they’ve voted by mail, but with reports of election integrity issues, they decided to vote in person this year.
“I wanted to see what the process is to see if there was any way someone can do a scam or do multiple votes,” Mike Basson said. “With all the hoopla that’s gone on the last few years, I just wanted to come down and spend the hour and watch it myself.”
The Bassons said their voting experience was smooth, and the polling workers were pleasant and helpful. In Arizona, ballots aren’t preprinted. Instead, voters must verify their ID, and then a ballot is printed with their information. Mike said that while that process made him “nervous,” there weren’t any issues.
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Bill Troutman, who has been a Democrat poll greeter for 30 years, was surprised to find just 10 voters in line when the site he was assigned to in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, opened at 7 a.m. The county is located in the south central part of Pennsylvania.“I think it has to do with mail-in ballots, especially in this ward, because of intimidation,” Troutman told The Epoch Times. “Lots of firearms here.”
He said a planned Black Lives Matter rally in the borough was advertised on social media two years ago, and there were rumors that busloads of Antifa members were coming to the rally.
“Business owners put armed guards on their roofs,” Troutman said. “That put the squash on things for people in this area. People feel safer voting from home. Especially the Democrats.
“The evangelical Christian churches have done a good job getting lots of new voters,” he said, noting that most of them are Republicans. “The Democrats are doing the same thing, but most are voting from home.”
Tim French, 77, and Mary Lou Bozeman-French, 68, have 50 years of military service between them. Now retired, their military years have convinced them that voting is their duty.
They often support opposing candidates and, in effect, cancel each other’s votes out. They said they gave a lot of thought to mail-in voting.
“Voting is important enough that you should come out in person,” French said. “It’s always been that way. It makes me feel that I’m doing my duty.”
He believes that until the kinks are worked out of mail-in voting, there’s room for cheating.
Bozeman-French says mail-in voting is vital for the many people who are sick or can’t get to the polls for any number of reasons. When she was in the military and voted by absentee ballot, she worried about her vote counting. Now, she says she’s concerned that Republicans may make it harder to vote by mail.
Evelyn Mummau, 69, votes in every election; she noted that fewer people vote when the presidential election isn’t on the ballot. That’s a shame, she said, because politics closest to home affects us the most.
“I think we are in a unique time,” Mummau told The Epoch Times. “It seems that what was once right is now wrong, like law and order.”
She said it used to be clear that crime is wrong, and today, sometimes it’s celebrated.
Jeanette Thompson, 62, and Yuri Sheaffer, 51, are regular voters. They were voting at a Mount Joy polling place.
“I’ve been voting since I was in my 20s,” Thompson told The Epoch Times.
They were taking a selfie photo together in the parking lot because, while they live in the same household, they don’t usually get to the polling place at the same time.
Georgia
Georgia voters cast ballots on Nov. 8 to decide one of America’s most competitive midterm contests.The U.S. Senate race between incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Republican challenger Herschel Walker may decide which party controls the chamber.
In Georgia, a purple state, every ballot counts. Voters seem to recognize this power and have come to the polls to vote early in record numbers, polls show.
DeKalb County Republican Chair Marci McCarthy said she expected Georgia voters to cast 4 million votes by the end of Election Day. While polls had shown many close races, she expected a red wave.
Voices From Voters
The Epoch Times interviewed eight voters at polling sites at the Trinity Presbyterian Church and at the Tucker Library, both in Atlanta, and found a relatively even mix of Walker and Warnock voters.
“The thing that was most important to me was determining who would stand up for women’s rights and who would have the best interest of our children going forward,” said Denise Meredith, a voter for Warnock at Trinity.
Meredith said she also voted for Warnock because he supports strong pre-K programs for children. She noted that she votes in every election.
Meanwhile, a Walker voter at Tucker, Jason Mejia, said this election is about “family values, trying to reduce taxes, and inflation as well.”
Supporting pro-life policies is the most important part of this election, Mejia said. He also noted that he votes in every election.
Choices Made
Some Walker voters emphasized their appreciation of Republican tax policy.“I think they'll do more with the taxes and inflation,” Walker voter Rita McHugh said of Republicans. McHugh, who’s retired, says a good economy is important.
“I’m not that crazy about Walker, because of his history,” she said. “But he is talking [about lowering] the taxes. And that’s the issue that I’m looking at—the money.”
One Warnock voter emphasized the candidates’ qualifications for holding office. Matt, who declined to give his last name, said Walker’s career as a football player suggests that he lacks political expertise.
Sandy Springs, Georgia
Kimberly Gullatt, 59, said no particular issues brought her out to vote at Spalding Drive Elementary School in a middle-class neighborhood of single-family homes in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs on Nov. 8.“It’s my civic duty,” she told The Epoch Times.
Gullatt said she thought about early voting, but “it’s so weird.”
“It’s always crowded at the early voting location,” she said. “It’s so much easier here. This is walk in and walk out.”
Stacy Voutila, 35, who lives down the street from the school, told The Epoch Times that she decided to vote at the school on Election Day for the same reason.
“We live so close, and there’s never a line here on Election Day,” she said.
Asked what issues were on her mind, Voutila said, “The majority of it is the economy and making sure our representatives are spending appropriately. My husband is in finance, so saving money and spending it on the right resources is very important to us. I follow my husband.”
She said she and her husband Rob are expecting their first child in April.
Voutila said that while researching issues, it was depressing to learn that “it seemed like people didn’t know anything about anything” and that hard facts and details were hard to come by.
On gun control, she said, “When representatives say their policies would make sure criminals aren’t getting them, do they not know that criminals are getting them? Because they’re criminals.”
And she doesn’t care for how vicious election campaigns have gotten.
“I wish there were a bit less slander,” Voutila said. “Just tell me what you’re going to do instead of slandering your opponent. We could save some trees with all the political campaigns. Tell me less of what people are doing wrong and more of what you’re going to do.”
Theresa and Taylor Robison, who live around the corner from Spalding Drive Elementary School, came to vote before going running together.
“It’s so convenient to come to the school up the street,” Theresa Robison, 39, an IT worker, told The Epoch Times.
The couple has children in a private school.
The prime issue for Taylor Robison, 45, is “that the Republican Party appears very corrupt, with a former president who is under many investigations.”
“It seems important to make sure his party doesn’t get a lot of support right now,” he said.
Robison manages a software team for a UPS subsidiary that’s based in Sandy Springs.
“These are scary times, with the January 6, [2021,] events,“ he told The Epoch Times. ”People are taking the election seriously. It’s important to go vote, to make sure the numbers are solid.”
“I vote every single time,” said Jennifer Hammond, 60, who lives in the neighborhood but raised her now-grown children in the neighboring suburb of Alpharetta. She works in advertising at Kia Motors’ regional office for a West Coast ad agency that handles the automaker’s account.
“The most obvious issue is the economy, definitely,“ she said. ”I don’t like the direction of the country, and we’re spending a fortune overseas. We have domestic issues like homelessness that need to be handled first. There’s a mess in this country with homelessness. And the border is wide open.”
Referring to the Ukraine war, Hammond told The Epoch Times, “That’s money we shouldn’t be spending, in my opinion.”
She said she had spent time abroad and compared U.S. elections unfavorably to those she had witnessed elsewhere.
“I don’t agree with the divisiveness,“ Hammond said. ”The name-calling is ridiculous. And it’s on both sides. We’re all in this together.
“The amount of PAC money in this country is out of hand. They gave $80 million to (Raphael) Warnock. I know it’s being funneled by [billionaire financier George] Soros and who knows who else.
“And climate change. I don’t agree that we’ve got to do this tomorrow. It needs to be phased in over time. And why should the U.S. bear the brunt of it? China and India are polluting more than we are, but they’re not being told they have to step up.
Florida
Many in Southwest Florida, which is still recovering from a beating by Hurricane Ian, voted early.
About 200 miles upstate, a Florida man, who declined to give his name, reviewed a blue slip of paper as he walked toward his voting precinct at North Gainesville Baptist Church. It was a Democratic slate card that was handed to him and other arriving voters at the parking area entrance by a volunteer from the Alachua County Democratic Party.
The man said he planned to use the information to vote for Democrats, from the top of the ballot to the bottom. He said he used to be a Republican, but cast his last ballot for a conservative politician when he voted for former President George H.W. Bush.
“It really does not matter” who wins elections, he said. “I don’t believe completely in the Democrats, either.”
His choice between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and his challenger, former Democratic congressman Charlie Crist?
“That one’s hard,” he said.
“I like the idea of Ron DeSantis. But I don’t think I'd like him” personally, he said.
He couldn’t think of anything favorable about Crist, other than his current registration as a Democrat.
Crist previously served as a Republican governor of Florida, then registered as an independent in a failed bid for a U.S. Senate seat. Before his recent resignation from his congressional post, he served five years as a Democrat.
“I don’t like him, either,” the man said, shaking his head. “It’s the lesser of two evils, I guess. For me, it’s a hot mess.”
Dana, a nurse practitioner who lives in Fort White, Florida, took a three-hour, sign-waving shift on Election Day to call attention to a ballot initiative in neighboring Alachua County. She asked to not disclose her full name for fear of retribution over expressing support for a conservative issue.
As drivers sped by, honking in apparent agreement, she explained that if the measure passes, it would change the way Alachua residents vote for county commissioners and give conservative voters in rural areas an opportunity to elect representatives who share their values.
Currently, all voters in the Democrat-dominated county choose five at-large commissioners. So it’s almost impossible for a conservative to be elected, she told The Epoch Times. The change would create single-member districts, with each citizen voting for one commissioner to represent the district in which they live.
“Now, they don’t have a voice,” she said. “Everybody’s entitled to a voice.”
Some liberal federal policies related to COVID-19 are hurting conservative medical professionals in the state, even with a Republican governor and a Republican-controlled legislature, she said. People who refused the COVID-19 vaccine aren’t considered for most jobs, she said, despite a nationwide shortage of nurses and doctors.
“Everybody thinks the vaccine issue is over,” she said. “I thought the vaccine issue was over.”
But after finishing her training as a nurse practitioner, she began to apply for jobs. While she produced federal and state exemption forms that should have allowed her to opt out of the vaccine, she was told that the unvaccinated wouldn’t be considered, she said.
She has serious concerns about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. But now that she’s finished school, she needs a job, and tears of frustration haven’t helped. Now, she’s hoping to work for a state prison, instead of a hospital.
“Everything works out for a reason,” she said with a shrug, before smiling and waving at another passing car.
