On Tuesday morning, Stephen Hoffman, stood outside his house on a side street off Chapman Street in Greenfield, wearing a patriotic top hat and leaning against a half-dismantled ’70s’ Camaro, holding a cardboard sign with “vote Trump, honk for freedom” scrawled in black Sharpie.
“I had a woman come by and call me a bigot just for voting for Trump,” he said, adding that someone else had called 911 on him, thinking he was dressed as a clown.
Like many Americans, Hoffman is worried about the state of global affairs. Thus, the presidential election meant a chance to personally impact the future.
“I’m down for whatever won’t get us nuked,” he continued, “If I had to choose between two people I didn’t like, and one of them would get me killed, I’d choose breathing.”
Despite the state’s liberal lean, some voters across Franklin County lined up at polling stations and cast ballots for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“I think Trump will really open people’s eyes,” South Deerfield voter Sylvia Perkins said, referring to political corruption. For Perkins and her husband, Ken Perkins, a vote for Trump meant a vote for “a new approach” to politics, and “real change.”
To the Deerfield couple, despite having a murky presidential campaign, Trump brought more to the table than his opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Ken Perkins said Clinton has too many skeletons in her closet, and is too connected to big-business, to make sound decisions.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Ginny Desorgner was part of a group of women and men holding Hillary Clinton signs and waving at voters on the sidewalk near Greenfield High School Tuesday afternoon.
Desorgner remembers the stories her mother would tell her, about how Desorgner’s grandmother didn’t have the right to vote. Her mother always made her vote in every single election, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential it seemed. She died several years ago.
“I started to cry when I marked my ballot,” she said. “I was thinking of my mother.”
For many Clinton supporters at the polls and waving their signs on Tuesday, the day felt like it was a long time coming and what many voters described as a personal, emotional and high stakes election.
Alyssa Castine, a Sunderland voter, said she works at a homeless shelter, and the fear of losing services for clients got her to the polls this year.
“I feel a lot of pressure,” she said.
Women weren’t the only ones showing up for Clinton. Adam English, a Turners Falls voter, said he had supported Clinton since the primaries, an unpopular stance with his friends who supported Bernie Sanders.
“She’s the most qualified candidate and the rest of the world is watching,” he said.
Pete Houlihan, another voter from Sunderland, said the choice was easy because of how different the candidates were this year. He said he is the son of an immigrant, which guided his vote on Tuesday.
“There’s never been a more important election in my lifetime,” he said.
Others voted for Clinton at least in part because of the alternative — a President Trump.
“I lived in New York my whole life, and I know Mr. Trump. That’s why I’m voting for Hillary Clinton,” said Shelburne resident Rosemarie Miller.
“Hillary or Trump, I’ll take Hillary, no question,” said Bruce Kahn of Northfield, who was originally a Sanders supporter.
A choice between Clinton and Trump disappointed many voters.
“It’s been a joke,” Bernardston resident James Gross said of the election. “It’s a sad state that this is the best we can come up with, with an entire country.”
Gross expressed his discouragement with the binary Democrat-Republican system, which he called outdated and old-fashioned.
“They hold too much regard on this split in the middle,” he said. “If people just went with who they thought was better, what would be wrong with that?”
“If you can’t decide who to vote for in this election you can flip this coin,” read a sign next to a coin on a table in the Leyden Town Hall. Election volunteer and town resident Marie Lovley said throughout the day, a few voters used the coin to make their choice.
Many felt that both candidates were equally bad and voted third-party.
Dan Hamberg, of Turners Falls, said he voted for a third-party candidate for the first time in his entire life. His priority was the statewide ballot initiatives. In light of Sanders’s disappointing loss in the primaries, others used the vote as a chance to advance alternative political agendas.
Whately voter Ross Kellogg, a Liberterian, said he supports Gary Johnson and hopes this election will expand third-party support in the future.
“The most important thing about this election is making it possible for third party candidates in the future,” Kellogg said.
Fans of Clinton said they felt overall that Hillary was heading toward a win, but supporters like Patty Perry and Corine Baker just didn’t want to stay home. Both women were dressed in all white as an homage to the suffragettes and Perry, a Democratic National Committee delegate was waving her vertical “Hillary” sign, that she brought home from the convention in Philadelphia.
She and Baker are both long-time Democratic volunteers and were both working women in the 1980s, when there was a lot less women could do to combat sexism. Baker said their struggles often felt mirrored in what Clinton overcame.
“To see her get nominated and possibly win the presidency, feels, like winning in the end,” she said. “It feels like finally getting some … validation. Some validation for the struggle that we went through.”
Michelle Peters of Warwick noted that regardless of who wins, this election is a historic one.
“The historical factor of a political candidate that’s never held an office versus the first woman president makes it truly monumental,” Peter said.
To ensure that her 22-year-old daughter Caitlin was able to vote for the first time, Sherry Deane of Bernardston drove all the way to Shrewsbury’s post office to pick up her absentee ballot and deliver it to Bernardston. Caitlin Deane is attending college in Pennsylvania, and her ballot would not have arrived by mail in time.
“It’s going to be very close,” Sherry Deane said. “It is to the point where every vote needs to be counted.”
Many voters expressed their relief to see the election cycle finally coming to a close.
“I’m glad it’s going to be over after today,” Jennifer Rhodes of Bernardston said. “(The election) seems much nastier (this year), and I think the stakes are higher. I think we’ve seen a side of America we haven’t seen before.”
.