Ashley, 29, and Mack, 39, an interracial couple who chose to withhold their last names, each voted for Joe Biden in Wilkes-Barre, primarily out of concern for the futures of their seven young children. What they most valued from the election, though, was a sense of civility regardless of who won; “I hope everybody is respectful and stays in their lanes,” said Mack.
Navy veteran Amber Viola, 34, is voting for Biden because “I’m tired of waiting around for the Supreme Court to decide if I’m going to have rights or not.” Despite her support of Biden, Viola spent Election Day volunteering with a nonpartisan effort to get all voters to the polls.
Half an hour’s drive away in Scranton, a university town with significant ties to Joe Biden, the mood among Biden supporters was more jubilant. Early-afternoon voters at the Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple poll site faced little to no wait, and many of them shared a sense of excitement at getting to cast their votes against Trump. “This is the first time in a long time that I’ve voted Democrat,” recalled Korean War veteran Bob Alper, who didn’t let the fact that he uses a wheelchair deter him from voting in person: “Trump is too loquacious, and he said that he wouldn’t move on if he lost the election. I don’t like that.”
“This is the first time in a long time that I’ve voted Democrat,” recalls Korean War veteran Bob Alper.
Alper is voting against Trump because “he’s too loquacious, and he said that he wouldn’t move on if he lost the election.”
Alper wasn’t the only Scranton-based veteran who showed up to support Biden in person on Tuesday. Amber Viola, a 34-year-old veteran advocacy expert who spent eight years in the U.S. Navy, volunteered her time to drive voters to Scranton’s Everhart Museum poll site on Election Day. Although the effort was nonpartisan and open to all voters, Viola—a Black mother with years of experience working with survivors of military sexual trauma—voted for Biden because, in her words, “I’m tired of waiting around for the Supreme Court to decide whether I’m going to have rights or not.”
The post The View From Northeastern Pennsylvania On Election Day appeared first on Honk Magazine.
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