Relieved that the end is near, voters head to the polls in North Carolina
Early voting has officially begun in counties across North Carolina, and people are enthusiastic for it all to be over.
“Like so many other people, we were just so fed up with what’s been going on we just wanted to vote and get it over with,” Sherry Lee, a proud Hillary Clinton supporter, told CBS News.
“Donald Trump made [the election] a frightening experience,” she added.
The overwhelming sentiment for those leaving the Nash County Agricultural Center Auditorium on Thursday, the first day of early voting, was a mixture of civic pride and emotional relief.
Asked why she came to vote during the first day polls were open, Dottie Hudyma, a Trump supporter, said that she feels “very strongly for who I want to vote for but also because I am just really tired of this election and I wanted to get it done.”
“I have been through thirteen presidents and this has been the worst election process I have ever seen,” Joe Gownley, a local businessman and Trump supporter, said without hesitation as he walked to his car.
Nash County is a swing area just northeast of Raleigh and the well-known Research Triangle, the high-tech and research hub of the state. It holds a special distinction over the last two national elections as the only county in North Carolina to vote for Republican nominee John McCain in 2008 and then for President Barack Obama during his reelection campaign in 2012. In both cases, the candidate Nash County went for lost statewide.
That being said, the last two elections in Nash have been extremely close. McCain won in 2008 by 629 votes while, Obama in 2012 carried it by just 471, out of almost 50,000 votes cast.
North Carolina has been close statewide this cycle, and has become a pivotal battleground in the process. Obama won in 2008 by just under 15,000 votes and was the first Democrat to carry the state since Carter in 1976. Romney flipped it back in 2012 winning by over 90,000 votes.
With polls showing the state in a dead heat, there’s a chance North Carolina will decide who becomes the next president. And Although everyone agreed that this campaign has been unprecedented as far as tone, negativity, and subject matter, no one who showed up to the polls in the first hours in Nash County was still on the fence.
Paul Hyman Sr., a retired Vietnam veteran who voted for Obama in 2008 and Romney in 2012 and has lived in Nash county for fifteen years, is one of them. He said “something in my heart told me I couldn’t vote for her [Clinton],” citing Benghazi and Clinton’s handling of her emails. That made Hyman, an independent, a reluctant Trump voter.
“I voted for the lesser of two evils,” he said.
Braxton Speller, another Vietnam veteran who has lived in North Carolina since 1989, was firmly in Hillary Clinton’s camp and sees Trump as a legitimate danger to the county. “Trump is a lunatic, he is a walking time bomb,” Speller said.
Ann Martin, who has lived in Nash County since the 1960’s, voted for a candidate but did not want to say who. “There are no statesman left,” she said, “I am ashamed of both candidates, I didn’t want either.”
Like millions of others across the country, most of the people voting in Nash on Thursday had tuned into the final presidential debate Wednesday night to witness Trump suggest he not concede the election should he lose. They were also familiar with Republican nominee’s earlier suggestions on the campaign trail that the election could be rigged against him and include widespread voter fraud.
“I have confidence that my vote will count but I have a problem with the fact that there may be some votes that are not legitimate that count,” Hudyma said. “It is hard to say that it is rigged, exactly, but is there voter fraud? Yeah. there probably is.”
But Clinton’s supporters did not buy Trump’s assertions of election tampering.
“Every time it looks like [Trump] is not going to get where he wants to go then he is always calling foul play and he is calling foul play and we haven’t even voted yet,” Jannie Huff explained. “I just feel like that is just the easy way out, when I am going down hill put in on somebody else. That is what he has been doing all along”
Asked if there was anything else she wanted to add about the election, Huff offered support for those who hadn’t come out to the polls yet.
“I just encourage everyone to get on out here to vote whether it’s for Hillary or not. Vote. That way you will know that you were counted,” Huff said with a smile.
Meanwhile, Churchill “Buck” Young, a Trump supporter who described Clinton as a “despicable and really evil person,” said he would still be praying for her should she win.
“I think she is impetuous, and I think she is a habitual liar, yes I do, and her acts in Benghazi and her acts using an illegal server are criminal and she should be prosecuted for them. But if she is president good luck to her because I pray for her and I wish her the best.”