WASHINGTON—Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is in Washington on Tuesday, awaiting the crucial election results that will determine the next president of the United States and, thus, her political future.
After a two-year campaign season, millions of people are heading to the polls throughout the country.
Harris chose her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, to host her election night watch party.
Security has been heightened around the college campus in preparation for tonight’s event, with some buildings guarded with security fencing.
As an HBCU, or historically black college and university, Howard holds a special significance for the vice president. She graduated from Howard with a bachelor’s degree in 1986. She has referred to her time there as her “formative years,” where she first discovered her passion for politics.
“I am proud to be the first HBCU vice president of the United States. I intend to be the first HBCU president of the United States,” Harris told Lenard “Charlamagne” McKelvey in a recent interview.
If Harris emerges victorious, she will be the first woman, and the first woman of color, to be elected to the nation’s highest office.
Zarion Irby, a student at Howard University and a registered voter from Minneapolis said he has already cast his vote for Harris using a mail-in ballot.
He said is proud to see a black woman running for the presidency.
“I believe in what she stands for, especially in terms of women’s rights and reproductive health care. And obviously, she’s a black woman and that’s important to me,” he told The Epoch Times.
Irby said he would be watching the results on campus with his classmates tonight.
“I think a majority of people on campus are voting for Kamala Harris,” he said.
Samara Riascos, an 18-year-old Howard University freshman majoring in political science and philosophy, was on her way to the polls to vote for Harris on a sunny Election Day in Washington.
“I never thought the first time I would vote would be for a black woman, and I think that’s extremely beautiful to me,” she told The Epoch Times.
Riascos is thrilled that Harris will be observing the election results from her college, calling the moment “historic.”
“The fact that she chose to come back here, where her roots came from and where she started, I think that’s beautiful,” she said.
A day before Election Day, both Harris and her rival, former President Donald Trump, toured battleground states to make their final pitch to voters, encouraging them to participate in what they both consider the most consequential election of this era.
Harris visited Pennsylvania on Nov. 4, making her final appeal to the state’s 9 million voters at events in Scranton, Allentown, and Pittsburgh and closing her campaign with a midnight rally in Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania is a critical battleground for Harris. In 2016, Trump won the state by 44,000 votes, while in 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden won by nearly 80,000.
On Nov. 4, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, held rallies in North Carolina and then made two stops in Pennsylvania before wrapping up his campaign in Michigan with a late-evening event where he took the stage just after midnight.
Hillary Innocent Taylor Seguya, a Ugandan human rights activist and graduate student studying international relations at Harvard University, said he is hoping to attend the watch party on Howard’s campus.
Although he is not a voter, the 29-year-old said he is an enthusiastic follower of the U.S. election.
“I traveled from Boston to D.C. to be part of this historic event,” he told The Epoch Times.
“I’ve been supporting Kamala Harris because of her fight for reproductive freedom, human rights, and environmental justice. I’m very optimistic.”
