CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Americans are accustomed to standing in line. They queue up for airport security, the latest iPhone, COVID tests, concerts or food.
But the line of voters building before sunrise outside Mallard Creek High School in a distant suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday was different.
It was a living chain of hundreds of people who stepped into place — around the building, down some stairs and past a fleet of idled yellow school buses — determined to be counted in the elemental civic ritual of voting, which seems even more consequential in the bitter, beclouded 2020 presidential election. “If you want the United States to remain united, you need to vote,” said Monique Sutton, 52 and a nurse practitioner. “Because if we.