Voting Early in the US Elections
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Five days before the American election, record numbers have cast their ballots already, making use of the expansion in early voting due to the pandemic. Naturalised US citizens make up one in ten eligible voters this year. Among them Laura Trevelyan, who voted in the presidential race as a US citizen for the first time, joining the queues in New York City. For Lebanon, 2020 has been a veritable annus horribilis: the pandemic, an unprecedented economic crisis, and the huge blast that destroyed parts of Beirut, and led to the resignation of the cabinet. Now a former Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, has been asked to form a government. If he succeeds, it’ll be his third time in the job. Plus ca change, or last chance for Lebanon, asks Martin Patience. Chile held a referendum on Sunday about replacing the current constitution, which dates from General Pinochet’s military dictatorship. The Yes vote won overwhelmingly. But the poll had been a heated topic of conversation for months, reflecting the deep divisions in society, as Jane Chambers has found. Seychelles in the Indian Ocean looks like a tropical paradise. But there’s a tougher reality in the island state ruled by the same party for over 40 years. And now there’s been a political earthquake: an opposition candidate, a priest, won the presidency for the first time. He'll have more than tourists and tuna to deal with, says Patrick Muirhead. For those still travelling, much has changed with the pandemic - quarantines, wearing masks, producing negative Covid-19 tests before departure. And then there are the other passengers. It all makes for novel experiences, says travel writer Mark Stratton - including good ones, like seeing the Mona Lisa without the crowds.
Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Good morning. |
| 0:06.8 | When things are not going well, there's always someone who's doing worse, an uncomfortable |
| 0:12.4 | comfort, but it comes to mind when looking at Lebanon these |
| 0:16.0 | days and our correspondent wonders if the country can be turned around. |
| 0:22.1 | You get rid of a dictator but his legacy lingers, so in Chile they finally |
| 0:27.4 | got rid of the Constitution from General Pinochet's time. We ask if this will heal divisions. And the President can be ousted by the |
| 0:36.3 | opposition. We're in the Seychelles, where the opposition candidate, a priest, has won, and he'll find in his intray more than just tourists and tuna fish. |
| 0:48.0 | First, five days to go and I suspect a night when rather more people than usual this side of the |
| 0:55.2 | Atlantic will be staying up to hear the US presidential election result. |
| 1:00.9 | Record numbers have already cast their vote. |
| 1:03.4 | Under record one in ten eligible voters this year |
| 1:07.2 | are naturalised US citizens. |
| 1:09.6 | One of them is Laura Trevelyan, |
| 1:11.6 | who cast her vote for the first time heading early to the ballot box in New York City. |
| 1:17.0 | It was a cold and drizzly morning in downtown Brooklyn and still dark when I joined the long line of early voters. |
| 1:25.0 | At 6.30 a.m. the queue numbered several hundred and stretched as far as the eye could see. |
| 1:31.0 | Everyone was wearing a mask, waiting patiently in a socially |
| 1:35.2 | distanced manner. I was astonished, having got up early assuming I'd be near the |
| 1:40.5 | front of the line. New York is not exactly a battleground state. Joe |
| 1:45.3 | Biden is counting on winning the 29 Electoral College votes here. Yet after this |
| 1:50.4 | turbulent time in US politics people want to be heard. |
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