🏛🇺🇸🗳 People in Washington Are Fleeing Town for Election Day

Earlier this month, D.C.’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District — which represents employers on the office-dense western side of downtown Washington — gathered members along with officials from Homeland Security, the Secret Service, the U.S. Park Police and the local Metropolitan Police Department to walk through a tabletop exercise about what might happen if the core of the capital was convulsed by election violence.

“I said to the guys, ‘I want you to call Lowe’s and Home Depot and ask what it takes to buy six or seven pallets of plywood” to cover storefront windows, the leader of another D.C. local business organization told me. Ideally, the organization leader quickly added, the stuff would be returnable. “I want to be prepared, but I hope we don’t need it. It sends a terrible message the minute you board up a window.”

The city’s police chief, Pamela Smith, said her department hadn’t picked up any specific threats for election week or the months beyond.

As for the scenario of a Trump victory leading to marauding crowds of left-wing protesters, Holt said he wasn’t hugely concerned about that, either.

After two centuries of stable democracy, Americans just aren’t very good at gaming out the odds around questions of election-related personal safety.

Politics has changed, and a capital whose culture is built on process and credential isn’t really built to deal with it.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/25/dc-residents-leaving-election-week-00185313

https://archive.ph/qzzlj