Snapshots From Jersey City: The Inner City Heads to the Polls
Jersey City is just waking up as the polls open early Tuesday morning. An assortment of lumbering buses gingerly thread their way around two shiny firetrucks parked curbside, an accommodation for the hubbub in and around the fire station. One of them, a yellow school bus, stops at the corner where Tiffany Newmann is waiting with her young son.
“Mostly what I am voting for is just to be against Trump,” said Newmann as she watches the departing school bus. “I don’t normally cast an anti-vote. But in this election, I don’t have a choice.” She said she will probably vote for Hillary, but added “I’m on the fence, I might vote for a third party just because I want the third party to get enough votes to get funding.”
This is the local polling center, better known as Engine 15, Ladder 9, a well-maintained red-brick firehouse only blocks from the center of Jersey City. But today, it seems to be the center of politics.
Tommy Curtis hovered around the opposite corner of the firehouse. He was out in support of John Hallanan, an incumbent Jersey City councilman. Curtis considered this election special because he said the previous councilman “was removed because he got arrested.” The previous Ward B councilman, Khemraj Rhamchal, resigned after a DUI arrest, according to a May 25 report by NJ.com.
“He’s had a positive attitude. He’s young blood,” said Curtis, referring to Hallanan. He was wearing a bright-red t-shirt (emblazoned with the word VOTE) over a pink shirt and tie, and said that elsewhere on the ballot he is a Hillary supporter.
For other supporters, the issues at stake in the center of the city are far more local. Junaid Choudhry is drumming up support for his personal friend, Mussab Ali, running for a local Board of Education seat.
For Zakaria Moustafa, his first time voting in the U.S. will be for democrats and for Hillary. “You have to do it,” Moustafa said. “You can do something for your future.” He added that who you vote for matters. If you select a crazy person, “you have results to pay.”
But to Newmann, the result is already here. She believes that eventually both the Democratic and Republican parties will split, creating a four-party system. A solid Bernie Sanders supporter in the past, she continues to hold out hope for more options—if not in this election cycle, then in the next cycle. “I feel that a lot of what I would normally base my vote on is not even being considered,” she said.
“I want my vote to do the most good.”
