NEW CASTLE, Del. (AP) – President Joe Biden has announced early voting in the 2024 general election.
It’s a bittersweet moment for Biden, who decided to end his reelection campaign in July amid growing concerns about his health and Democrats’ concerns about his chances of defeating former President Donald Trump. Biden voted Monday at the Delaware Department of Elections, not far from his home outside Wilmington, Delaware, at an early voting site, where voters lined up down the street to cast their ballots.
Biden chatted with voters as he stood in line to cast his ballot, and helped push an elderly woman in a wheelchair standing in front of him. The president waited in line for about forty minutes before casting his vote.
He handed his ID to the election worker, who had him sign a form and announced, “Joseph Biden is going to vote now.”
As the president cast his vote behind a black curtain, some new voters were announced and the room erupted into cheers for them.
Outside the polling station, Biden was asked whether he thought Democrats – including Vice President Kamala Harris – would win.
“I think we will,” he said.
Since 1970, in all but a few years, Biden has held office or run for office during election season.
But this year, his hopes lie in a newer generation of Democrats, including three in Delaware’s primary who want to make history.
Harris, who was endorsed by Biden after dropping out, is vying to become the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to become president.
Senator Sarah McBride wants to become the first openly transgender member of the US House of Representatives.
McBride, a longtime friend of the Biden family, had served as an aide in then-President Barack Obama’s administration and in the 2006 and 2010 campaigns for the president’s late son, Beau Biden, to run for attorney general. Delaware. She also worked for former Delaware Governor Jack Markell.
McBride hopes to succeed Democratic Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who is seeking to become Delaware’s first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. Since 2017, she has been Delaware’s sole representative in the House of Representatives.
On Monday, Biden Blunt had breakfast in Rochester. He has known her family for decades and campaigned alongside her father, Theodore “Ted” Blunt, who served on the Wilmington City Council for nearly a quarter century, including as president. Biden formally endorsed Blunt Rochester on Sunday evening and made a video for her campaign in which he called her “Delaware through and through.”
Blunt Rochester is vying to succeed Senator Tom Carper, who has held the seat in the solidly Democratic state since 2001. He’s retiring.
Early voting began in Delaware on Saturday.
