After Justin Jones finished work early Tuesday morning, the commercial driver voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race. But he didn’t feel good about his choice.

“Trump is dangerous, he is unhinged,” Jones, 33, said outside his polling station in East Point, Georgia. “Harris needs to establish more dominance, I don’t want to feel like I’m sorry for voting for her.”

Immigration was on his mind: Jones thought it was necessary to secure the border, an issue he said Harris should take more seriously. But he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Trump, despite agreeing with him on the economy and immigration. Jones described the former president as a “strange person” who represents a threat to democracy. But he also worried about Harris’ competition.

“It’s like me trying to run the New York Yankees,” Jones said of Harris leading the country. “I mean, I know a lot about baseball and stuff, but it takes a lot to run a professional baseball team. I’m pretty sure she’s good on policy and tough on crime, but this is the leader of the free world!

Stickers placed on a table inside a polling station in Atlanta.

(Brynn Anderson/Associated Press)

Jones is among tens of millions of Americans heading to their local voting centers on Tuesday.

Amid deep polarization among the country’s citizens following the January 6 insurrection and the COVID-19 pandemic, law enforcement officials were preparing for threats against poll workers, violence at polling places and voter intimidation, and prepare for what will happen once the final votes are cast.

“I’m terrified,” Amy Trachtenberg, 72, said after voting for Harris in her downtown Philadelphia high-rise.

“I remember how I felt that night in 2016,” he said, recalling when it became clear that Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. If the former president is re-elected, “I know it will be much worse and that people will suffer.”

The retired social worker spoke on a clear, calm morning in Philadelphia as workers streamed into the city during rush hour with stickers that read “I Voted.” The lines at downtown precincts were busy and people who have been inundated with out-of-town organizers and ads for months could be heard speculating about the results on their cellphones, eager to see a conclusion to the contest. .

Justin Jones voted in East Point, Georgia, on Tuesday.

(Jenny Jarvie/Los Angeles Times)

But there was an undercurrent of fear, not only about the outcome, but also about what it will say about the character of the nation.

“I don’t want to get my hopes up,” Trachtenberg said. “There is a part of me that thinks, you know, that a black woman will never be elected in America. Nobody talks about that.”

Trachtenberg said Harris has done everything she can to win. “People keep talking about these things that are just embodied. And so I wonder what is embodied in America.”

In the red-leaning suburbs of Fayette County, Georgia, about 20 miles south of Atlanta, Danette Corcoran, a 67-year-old bus driver, voted for Trump because she thought he represented common sense.

“We just need to change things and fix them,” Corcoran said. “Democrats can’t do that.”

Corcoran, a former Democrat who was born and raised in Minnesota, said he believed his former party had dropped the ball on the economy and immigration. After voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, she was upset when he left the White House. He blamed voter fraud (and Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger), for Trump’s defeat.

Corcoran said he looked forward to having the former president back in the White House and hoped he would put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of health care.

“I don’t like his personality; he’s a little brash,” she said of Trump. “But he can handle it and fix things. I felt safe in my country when he was president. With Biden and Harris, I watched the world implode. “Prices have skyrocketed.”

Corcoran said he was confident Trump would win. But if she lost, she said, she was confident he would challenge the results and criticize the “good guy” system.

“I hope he has a seizure,” she said.

Corcoran’s main concern was a Democratic uprising: a Trump victory, he said, would lead people in the cities to loot and loot.

He also didn’t like the idea of ​​a Californian being president.

“California is moving here and we don’t like it,” he said. “We are paying high prices.”

More than 83 million Americans had voted as of Tuesday morning in the election that will determine not only whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Trump will win the White House, but also which party will take control of the Senate and House of Representatives. USA. .

In Phoenix, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes assured Arizonans that election officials were prepared for a long but efficient election day.

“As far as I know now, everything in the state of Arizona is working as best as possible,” Fontes told reporters Tuesday morning at a Phoenix library.

Aside from a rare minor issue (an election official forgot to bring a key to open a polling station around 6 a.m.), Fontes said polling places were operating across the state, and will be until they close at 7 p.m. , local time.

The first results to be released Tuesday night will take into account votes cast early — about 55% of the total count, Fontes said. Ballots cast on Election Day and on the final day will take longer, and the state’s official results will likely take 10 to 13 days, Fontes said, although media projections may come much sooner. He added that the state has already experienced record early voting.

Hours before the polls opened, the presidential candidates made their final speeches to voters.

Harris held her final campaign rally Monday night, 106 days after President Biden decided not to seek re-election, with a heavy dose of celebrity. trying to regain joy that characterized his first weeks on the road.

Outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, next to the iconic stairs that Sylvester Stallone ran while training on the “Rocky” film franchise, the vice president implored a raucous crowd to come up with a plan to vote.

“One more day, just one more day in the most consequential election of our lives,” he said. “And the momentum is on our side.”

Trump, at his last rally, continued to portray the nation as a disaster, threatened by an avalanche of dangerous criminal immigrants and suffering major economic problems, for which he blamed Harris, whom he called a “radical left-wing lunatic who destroyed San Francisco.” ”. “

He also criticized former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“She is a corrupt person, she is a bad person. Devil. She is an evil, sick, crazy b… Trump said, before appearing to stop before finishing the word.

“Oh no,” Trump said, as his supporters laughed. “It starts with B but I won’t say it. … I want to say it.”

Although voters are eager for the election to be over, unless polls showing an incredibly close election are wrong, the nation is unlikely to know who will be the next occupant of the White House on Tuesday night after the close of business. the ballot boxes. If it is a very close election, it would be days or potentially longer before the next president is named.

On Tuesday night, “Everyone needs to breathe, have a little patience, have a glass of wine, get up the next day and do it all over again,” Rick Hasen, a professor of campaign finance law at The Associated Press, told The Associated Press. UCLA. Times for a story about the mosaic of vote counting rules that could delay the result. “Maybe at the end of the week we will know what the answer is. Unless it’s an explosion.”

Mehta reported from Washington, DC, Bierman from Philadelphia, Jarvie from East Point, Georgia, and Pinho from Phoenix. Times staff writers Brittny Mejía in Las Vegas and Kevin Rector in San Francisco contributed to this report.