Monday, 26 October 2020_Violence has broken out between supporters of US President Donald Trump and counter-protesters in New York City on the state’s second day of early voting.
The clashes erupted as a large car parade of Jewish Donald Trump supporters was met with resistance in the city as it was passing Trump Tower, with the two sided trading punches.
The lines of Trump supporters’ vehicles, many of which draped with American and Israeli flags, stretched for several miles.
It was in Manhattan, where pro-Trump protesters violently clashed with counter-demonstrators and brawled in the street, as anti-Trump protesters began ripping signs off vehicles and throwing paint at them.
A large number of people were detained by the police.
The violent encounter occurred on the on second day of early voting in New York state, with people jamming polling places in long line for hours to cast ballots nine days ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
New Yorkers, in the reliably Democratic state, joined a flood of more than 56 million Americans across the country who have cast early ballots at a record-setting pace. Early in-person voting will continue in the state until Nov. 1.
Early voting in the 2020 US election has surpassed all the pre-election ballots from four years earlier, an independent vote monitor said Sunday.
Millions of Americans, intensely interested in the contest between Trump and Biden, are smashing records for casting ballots, whether by mail or in person amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump for months has been claiming, without evidence, that mail-in ballots lead to fraud.
The rush to vote early is a sign of Americans’ concerns about avoiding crowded polling places on Election Day and reducing the risk of exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 225,000 Americans.
New York’s violent clashes came as the FBI warned last month of “combustible violence” on US streets ahead of the November presidential election as tensions had increased between anti-racial protesters and far-right extremists during nationwide demonstrations that followed the police killing of African American George Floyd.
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