'Political passions and excitement are all around us' — election day in border town Sault Ste. Marie

Amy Hjerstedt has knocked on over 1,000 doors in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan this election.

She sees lawn signs and flags for both parties all over the small border town of 13,000. And she is trying to get them all to vote. 

"The political passions and excitement are all around us," says the public relations director of the League of Women Voters of the Eastern Upper Peninsula.

The league is one of the few non-partisan organizations in the U.S. that generally promotes democracy, works to boost voter turnout and educate citizens about local issues, such as the "dark stores" in Sault Michigan—big box retailers that pay less tax than the small businesses they compete with.

Hjerstedt says she's surprised that encouraging people to vote is sometimes seen as a partisan issue.

"The ability to vote, you would not think of that as a liberal or conservative ideology, but because the league comes down hard on access to voting, that has been construed as leaning one way and not another," she says.

"And that is unfortunate because I would think all parties, all people would want Americans who are eligible to vote to actually get to vote."

Chippewa County, which includes Sault Ste. Marie, saw 59 per cent of registered voters cast ballots in 2016 and 59 per cent of them supported Donald Trump.

The Upper Peninsula is a traditional Republican stronghold, but after Michigan suddenly became a swing state in 2016 when Trump won the state by just 10,000 votes, there is a renewed push to get as many ballots in the box as possible.

Hjerstedt she has heard many are planning to vote in person on election day, while some 6,000 have voted in advance.

Just across the river in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Linda Bignell is confident her vote will count. 

She got an email from Florida confirming that her mail-in ballot has been received in the hotly-contested swing state where she has long had a winter home, which she won't be visiting this year.

Bignell was born in New Jersey, but has lived in Canada for over 50 years, most of them in the Sault.

She says she is still getting over the 2016 election of Donald Trump and "indirectly" blames him for not being able to see her children and grandchildren and siblings who live in the United States.

Bignell says she's heard Canadians grumbling about their neighbours to the south for decades. But she says in the last four years the reason for the grumbling has changed. 

"It's never been a friendly attitude toward Americans. I think it was envy, a little bit of jealousy maybe," she says. 

"But it's never been pity."

Sault Ste. Marie has always been one city divided by a river and a border and many say that is the same the case even after the last tumultuous four years.

Sault Ontario city councillor Corey Gardi believes that, even after being forced to apologize for calling Donald Trump a "buffoon" in July for his response to the pandemic. 

"I don't know if I'd qualify it as an international incident, but I probably would have changed my choice of words," he says.

Gardi says he won't apologize for his criticism of the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19 and says if he lived in northern Michigan, he would be basing his vote on that.

He says not only have people not been able to visit friends and family because of the border closure, but the economy of Sault Michigan has "taken a kick" without Canadians driving over the bridge to visit grocery stores, restaurants and casinos.

"I would think that the inaction of the federal government has led to that border being closed longer than it should have been," says Gardi.