"There is nothing more important
".
Sometimes facing several hours of waiting, masked against the Covid-19, voters flocked to polling stations in Virginia on Friday, one of the first American states to allow early voting in person for the presidential election of November 3.
With less than fifty days of the election which will pit Donald Trump against Joe Biden, many American voters can already vote.
"We do not want to take the risk"
that our correspondence bulletins are lost, David Apatoff told AFP.
Even if it means waiting for hours to vote despite the threat of Covid-19?
"It's worth it.
There is nothing more important, ”he
says.
"There have been so many concerns about attempts to attack the post office and postal voting, and attempts to interfere with the ballot, that we wanted to register our ballot as fast as possible,"
added his wife Nell Minow. .
In this polling station in Fairfax, in the great suburbs of Washington, some voters confided that they waited four hours to cast their ballot.
Virginia voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 against Donald Trump and the polls once again give Democrat Joe Biden the advantage over incumbent Republican President.
Fairfax County had given the former Secretary of State a large victory.
Three other states opened the possibility of voting in person on Friday: South Dakota, Minnesota and Wyoming.
With them, more than twenty of the fifty American states will also have launched the postal vote by Saturday.
Read also: United States: why the post has become a major issue in the presidential election
With the novel coronavirus pandemic, voters could en masse opt for the latter option, which will save them from facing the long lines.
During the 2016 presidential election, nearly a quarter of the votes (33 million) had already been taken by mail.
This time, between 50 and 80 million bulletins could arrive by mail.
But Donald Trump has been undermining confidence in postal voting for months by shouting about the announced fraud.
This has earned the Republican billionaire, who votes himself by mail, to be pinned, and contradicted, on several occasions, by Twitter.
"Such a crazy world"
Beyond isolated incidents, no serious study has reported major fraud related to postal voting.
"We live in such a crazy world that I just felt it would be safer to, no matter what, go there in person," said
Suzanne Jones, outside the same polling station.
The long line surprised her, but
“it's encouraging to see so many people coming”
.
Gary Jones, a polling station official for Fairfax County, admits that the turnout on Friday
"was bigger than expected
.
"
Voters who had requested to vote by mail actually came in person, he explains.
"It slows down the process a lot because we have to make sure they don't have two ballots"
, canceling the one already issued by mail.
Donald Trump greeted on Twitter on the first day of voting in Virginia:
"We will WIN
.
"
And promised voters in this state, which also has more conservative rural regions:
“Vote for me.
I present myself for your weapons, and I present myself for your values ”
.
His Democratic rival is ahead of him in the national polls, but the gap is narrower in certain key states which conduct the American elections by switching from one party to another.
In addition to the presidential election, voters will choose on November 3 the 435 members of the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 senators as well as a multitude of local elected representatives.
Faced with the many photos of the long lines in Virginia circulating on Twitter, Dave Wasserman, analyst for the independent site Cook Political Report, warned:
“Yes, the enthusiasm for the vote is very high.
But we just won't be able to get a clear picture of the level on either side, "
Democrat and Republican,
" until November 3
.
Read also: US Presidential: Does postal voting encourage fraud, as Donald Trump asserts?