SILVER SPRING — In the Montgomery County suburb of Silver Spring, voters filing in and out of the polling station at James Hubert Blake High School on Tuesday morning passed a sign that read "Vote here!" in English and Spanish as they chatted with one another in those and several other languages.
In this cultural melting pot outside Washington, home to one of the largest immigrant communities in Maryland, young first-generation Americans arrived with their immigrant parents to vote together alongside older, whiter residents. Some said they preferred Hillary Clinton. Others, Donald Trump.
Among them were Gloria Y. Arevalo, a 27-year-old paralegal, and her mother, Gloria M. Arevalo, 58, a cook for the Montgomery County Public Schools system who immigrated to the United States years ago from El Salvador.
Both mother and daughter cast votes for Clinton for president — and Chris Van Hollen for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski — saying Trump's rhetoric about immigration and Mexicans had made the decision an easy one.
Trump has said he wants to build a massive wall along the Mexican border, suggested a ban on all Muslim immigrants, discussed a large-scale deportation effort of those in the country illegally, and questioned whether a federal judge with Mexican heritage could be impartial, among other comments perceived as slights by some Hispanic and immigrant voters.
"Donald Trump wants to get rid of all Mexicans or all Hispanics in general," the younger Arevalo said. "In general, we don't want to see families separated. It's not a good thing. People are coming here looking for a better life."
Arevalo said she hopes those in power in the country, and those running for public office in the future, are sent a clear message this election that the Hispanic vote is important, powerful, and capable of swinging an election — and that those who choose to sow racial divisiveness and unfounded fears about immigrants will face consequences at the ballot box.
"Hopefully they'll see that there are a lot of Hispanics in the U.S. that did make a difference," she said.
The mother and daughter said they appreciated the quickness with which they were able to vote. Four years ago at the same polling station, the older Arevalo said, they had to "wait in a very long line."
J.D. Chawla, a 49-year-old financial planner who was born in India and first immigrated to the United States in 1972, arrived at the polling station with his wife, Tammy, and two children, Hailey, 12, and Alexander, 8. He wanted to bring his kids so they could witness what could be the most important election in their lifetimes, he said.
"This is a very pivotal election, and it changes the dynamic of the future of this country and the economics of this country and the track that we will end up taking significantly," Chawla said. "There are two tracks: the existing track of existing economic policies — how we are taxed and how we make money, how we spend money — and what happens if Donald Trump comes in."
Chawla voted for Trump, calling himself "a Republican through and through." He also voted for Senate candidate Kathy Szeliga.
He said Trump's "business acumen" will allow him to steer the country in a better direction economically. He said Clinton wants to tax the wealthy, and believes a Clinton victory will leave the country divided.
"I think the rift will continue, because there's a sense of despair among many. There's a sense of, no, not this again for another four years, and possibly even eight years. So there's a sense of despair. Certainly we're up thinking about it at night, like what will it be like? What will our tax structure be like? Do we end up paying more taxes now? Because if you look at, for example, Hillary's plan? Tax the rich."
That "Robin Hood" approach to running a country by dolling out subsidies won't work, he said.
"There's not enough wealthy people to support that kind of expense," he said.
As an immigrant, Chawla — who said he has "an American flag carved inside my heart" — said Trump's tough policies on immigration and border restrictions do not bother him.
"I believe in following the process, following the law," he said of his own legal path to becoming an American citizen. "If you don't have border protection and some rule of law, what do you have? You have chaos."
Chawla said he and his wife don't discuss politics with many neighbors or friends in Silver Spring, but they do with their family. And he has been encouraged during trips into more red areas of the Eastern Shore, Virginia and West Virginia that Trump will come out on top, he said.
"All you see are Trump signs," he said.
Chawla said voting was easy on Tuesday, though the paper ballots gave him some pause.
"How do you confirm that what you put down on paper was what the machine read?" he asked.
Everest Chakraborty, 26, who works at a Trader Joe's grocery store, voted for Clinton. But he hadn't always been in her camp.
Chakraborty voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary for president. After Sanders lost to Clinton in the Democratic primary, Chakraborty said he wasn't sure what he would do in the general election.
"It took a while, a little bit of convincing, to get me out here to vote," he said outside the polling station Tuesday morning. But he talked to friends. And then he saw a video posted on Facebook, which outlined how Clinton had worked across the aisle in the Senate to "find common ground" and get things done.
It convinced him to vote for her, he said — though the election cycle as a whole has left him skeptical of how the future of the country will play out.
"It's kind of like a clown show," he said. While candidates in past presidential elections have "mostly been professional, this year it's been all over the place."
He said the country is facing a range of important issues that need sorting out — from the Standing Rock Sioux protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline, to immigration, to criminal justice reform around policing in America — and he doesn't know how they will be sorted out.
Chakraborty, who is Indian American, said this election has exposed "underlying racism" and "tension between groups of people in power and those who don't have power," and he wonders whether the divisiveness will continue unabated after the election.
"You see the true colors of the country right now," he said. "It's not just white people against everyone else, it's everyone against each other. It's not constructive and it doesn't do anything for us."
Christie Davis, 53, said she is "happy it's over."
Davis, a financial secretary at Trinity Assembly of God in Lanham who describes herself as an evangelical Christian, said she voted for Trump and Szeliga.
Davis, who is white and has been a longtime Republican, said she hasn't been comfortable with everything that has come from Trump's campaign this election season. But, she believes Trump — and the people he picks to help run his government if he wins — will adhere to the conservative values that are important to her, including her opposition to abortion.
"He's put around him conservatives, God-fearing men, so that's what I'm headed toward," she said.
Davis said her social circle has been divided during this election season, and "a little more vocal" about their differences than in past elections.
"But that's OK," she said.
She thinks the race will be close, but that "Trump's going to barely pull it out." She also thinks that the country will heal more quickly than some people predict.
"After a week or two, it will be water under the bridge," she said. "We'll have to support whoever is elected."
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