The Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris swept the Outer Cape in Tuesday’s presidential election, defeating Donald Trump and Mike Pence by margins ranging from 42 percent in Eastham to 85 percent in Provincetown.
In the four Outer Cape towns, the preliminary vote totals as of early Wednesday were 8,512 for Biden and Harris and 2,144 for Trump and Pence.
In the race for two county commissioner seats, Democrats Sheila Lyons and Mark Forest easily outpolled Republican Ronald Beaty and independent Abraham Kasparian in all four towns.
PROVINCETOWN — On Tuesday morning, 11-year-old Happy the dog walked into Provincetown Town Hall’s auditorium with her owner, Bonnie Catena. As Catena took care of business, checking in to vote, Happy did her business, on the hardwood floor.
“She must’ve just known how important this election is and been nervous, like all of us,” said Catena.
Nerves did run high during 13 hours of masked, distanced voting at town hall on Tuesday. But voters — anxious though they were — also said the prevailing emotion was hope.
Walking out of the voting room, Deborah Marten felt “hopeful”; Joshua Patner felt “fortunate to vote, really hopeful, really glad”; Tom Kalish was “happy, great, and full of hope.”
“I just feel fantastic,” said David Drake, who’d brought Joe Biden-style aviator glasses with him to the polls. “I voted for Biden and Harris, and I’m really excited. I have an old-fashioned, romantic attachment to Election Day.”
And there certainly was something old-fashioned and romantic about the scene in the dark-paneled auditorium. Voters received their paper ballots, which they filled out in pencil at eight generously distanced tables, then handed to poll workers for deposit into the town’s old hand-cranked ballot box.
This is a year when huge numbers of voters cast their ballots in relative silence, with the stamping of an envelope or the click of a button. But Provincetown Town Hall was full of sound: the tearing open of mail-in ballots, the scrape of the crank, the ring of the ballot box’s bell each time a vote was received. Paper rustled. Pencils scratched. Floors creaked.
And this — in a time when both in-person community and political civility seem in short supply across the nation — was the real miracle: an endless stream of chatter. “Thank you for voting.” “Oh, this feels great!” “Honey, is that you?!” “Thank you for volunteering.” “Think this is what America used to feel like?” —Josephine de La Bruyère
The preliminary Provincetown results, as of early Wednesday:
Total votes — 2,616
President & vice president
Biden/Harris — 2,399 (91.7%)
Trump/Pence — 181 (6.9%)
Others/write-ins — 29 (1.1%)
County commissioner
Ronald Beaty Jr. — 203 (7.8%)
Mark Forest — 1,862 (71.2%)
Sheila Lyons — 2,130 (81.4%)
Abraham Kasparian Jr. — 69 (2.6%)
Question 1: Right to repair
Yes — 1,925 (73.6%)
No — 559 (21.4%)
Question 2: Rank choice voting
Yes — 1,366 (52.2%)
No — 1,080 (41.3%)
TRURO — Most of the tellers knew most of the voters at the Truro Community Center. Even so, they had to yell to each other from a great distance in order to comply with social distancing requirements.
Voters checking in and out were separated from tellers by a row of chairs and plexiglass. Each person had to say their name at least once before going to one of the five voting booths.
Being loud was not a problem for Patricia Snell. When asked about her emotional state on voting day, she said, “I think it’s sort of like you reach a peak of anxiety; it’s like a bubble waiting to burst. And then it’s like you go to the doctor and you find out you’re not going to die or anything. And it’s over. It’s OK.”
She would not, however, reveal how she voted.
“It’s too polarized,” Snell said. “I’m prepared to accept whatever the vote is. No, I’m not going to get out my shotgun.”
Teller Jane Peters had the task of taking the ballot from each person and sliding it into the old-fashioned hand-crank ballot box.
The select board in January had voted to buy an electronic tabulator, which would have made counting faster. But in April, the select board rescinded that vote because, with the spring town meeting delayed, voters would not have had a chance to weigh in before the primary.
The hand crank got a real workout. By 4 p.m., 1,635 of the 2,032 registered voters had already voted, Peters said. Almost 60 percent of them early, said Susan Joseph, the acting town clerk.
But the night was still young. At 8 p.m. about a dozen counters started tabulating results. Even with all the early voting, Joseph said, Truro did not apply to the secretary of state to be allowed to start counting ahead of time. It was too much paperwork, she said. So, the entire job had to be done that night. —K.C. Myers
Preliminary Truro election results:
Total votes: 1,767
President & vice president
Biden/Harris — 1,386 (78.4%)
Trump/Pence — 339 (19.2%)
Others/write-ins — 36 (2.0%)
County commissioner
Ronald Beaty Jr. — 328 (18.6%)
Mark Forest — 1,037 (58.7%)
Sheila Lyons — 1,281 (72.5%)
Abraham Kasparian Jr. — 74 (4.2%)
Question 1: Right to repair
Yes — 1,322 (74.8%)
No — 369 (20.9%)
Question 2: Rank choice voting
Yes — 853 (48.3%)
No — 823 (46.6%)
WELLFLEET — The mood inside the Wellfleet Council on Aging was tense. The room was quiet, aside from the gentle whirring of ballots being fed into an electronic tabulator and the curt conversations between voters and the two volunteers checking them in. A single police officer leaned against the wall, keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. But there was still room for some friendly humor about this year’s turnout.
“We just want to beat Eastham,” said Roberta, an election volunteer.
Roberta had been operating one of Wellfleet’s two tabulators all day, methodically feeding it mail-in ballots since the polls opened at 7 a.m. Sixty-one percent of the Wellfleet electorate had voted early, she said, giving her a formidable stack of ballots to work through. By 5 p.m, she still had two piles left, each almost a foot high.
She said that, initially, she was resistant to Wellfleet’s choice to use electronic tabulators for the first time in this election. But after seeing the overwhelming number of mail-in ballots, she was glad to not have to be counting them by hand.
“Things have been really, really busy,” said Town Clerk Jennifer Congel. Flipping through the book of voter rolls, Lisa, a first-time election volunteer, pointed out page after page full of red check marks.
For those who decided to vote in person on Election Day, being at the polls evoked a sense of pride. Britney, 20, wanted her first time voting to be in person.
“I was going to mail in my ballot, but I wanted to come in and see what it was like to vote and be a part of that presence,” she said.
Masked up and physically distant, with the help of a winding path of painter’s tape pieces placed six feet apart on the hardwood floor, voters said they cherished the atmosphere and nostalgia of voting at the booth.
“I loved hearing the ding of the ballot box when we used to do it that way here,” said Alana Hyde.
The second tabulator waited, ready to be called into action once it was time to process ballots cast in person a few hours later. Wellfleet will be processing mail-in ballots postmarked on Election Day on Friday, so a team of volunteers will be returning then to finish their counting. —Johnny Liesman and Dylan Sloan
The preliminary Wellfleet election results:
Total votes: 2,426
President & vice president
Biden/Harris — 1,887 (77.8%)
Trump/Pence — 478 (19.7%)
Others/write-ins — 48 (2.0%)
County commissioner
Ronald Beaty Jr. — 451(18.6%)
Mark Forest — 1,360 (56.1%)
Sheila Lyons — 1,821 (75.1%)
Abraham Kasparian Jr. — 125 (5.2%)
Question 1: Right to repair
Yes — 1,851 (76.3%)
No — 484 (20.0%)
Question 2: Rank choice voting
Yes — 1,201 (49.5%)
No — 1,109 (45.7%)
EASTHAM — With so many Eastham residents voting early in person or mailing in ballots, town hall was relatively calm on Election Day. People trickled in throughout the day, but only one voter could be seen outside waving an Eastham Democratic Committee sign that read “PLEASE VOTE.”
Eastham was number one in early voter turnout on the Outer Cape at 67 percent. With a total of 4,607 current registered voters in Eastham, the town had already processed 3,096 ballots by Oct. 28.
Lee Goffin-Bonenfant, 35, was the lone voter braving the cold to dance outside town hall in the early afternoon in an attempt to attract people passing by to pull in and vote.
“I have faith in what used to be our democratic process,” she said, adding that she felt it was important to be seen representing a younger generation of voters.
“If millennial and Gen Z voters turn out, then that’s a very different election than if they don’t,” she said.
When voters entered town hall they were greeted downstairs and led into the large room where the select board regularly meets.
Warden Shawn Shea oversaw the operation, where a single-file path was set up so voters could weave through the room, cast their ballots, and exit through a separate door to remain socially distant throughout their time voting. —Ryan Fitzgerald
Preliminary Eastham results:
Total votes: 4,088
President & vice president
Biden/Harris — 2,840 (69.5%)
Trump/Pence — 1,146 (28.0%)
Others/write-ins — 64 (1.6%)
County commissioner
Ronald Beaty Jr. — 1,152 (28.2%)
Mark Forest — 2,007 (49.1%)
Sheila Lyons — 2,551 (62.4%)
Abraham Kasparian Jr. — 256 (6.3%)
Question 1: Right to repair
Yes — 3,195 (78.2%)
No — 769 (18.8%)
Question 2: Rank choice voting
Yes — 1,590 (38.9%)
No — 2,318 (56.7%)
