CLEVELAND — Voters in Northeast Ohio watched election returns Tuesday night hoping their candidate garnered enough votes to win the state.
"My faith is low, but my hopes are high," Kyla Beville said Tuesday afternoon.
Beville, a young Democrat, supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in the primary but voted for former Vice President Joe Biden on Election Day.
"(If we) have the results tonight and I'll be shocked," Beville said about what voters can expect to see after polls close.
And she isn't alone in wondering what the early turnout did to the final totals.
"So I guess I'm wondering if, with the month of early voting, absentee voting, if it took away from today?" pondered Tascha Schlachet.
She's a Trump supporter living in Lorain County; a closely watched county after Hilary Clinton narrowly won the area in 2016.
But, as a self-described political junkie, Schalchet's wait for Election Day is over.
"It's just exciting, right? It's going to be a long night. It's very exciting," she said.
"Politics is a contact sport. And this year we played that contact sport," said Raymond Green Jr., a voting rights activist in Akron.
Even though the physical polls are closed for 2020, Green said the work isn't done.
"We have to continue to do that in the future elections," he said.
With sights on future elections already, Schlachet and Green still have one eye on Tuesday's results.
"Chaos, confusion, lack of understanding as we continue to tally these votes to declare a winner," Green said about the wait for a winner.
"If there's not a clear winner tonight, I think it's just a lot of anxiety, nervousness, frustration," Schlachet said.
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