First published in The Record, Nov. 5, 2020

Inside, the vote count continues. Outside, a humbled man waits

Ariel Spruill has two jobs, no home, and $300. He keeps his clothes, clean and folded, in a shopping cart on the sidewalk of Camac Street, 30 feet from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. 

Inside the building, workers spent much of Thursday counting the votes that may decide the 2020 presidential election. Outside, hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump and Joe Biden chanted and cheered in a raucous street protest that occasionally grew testy. 

Spruill avoided the crowd. He avoided the swarms of police officers, and he never looked up to see the police helicopters circling overhead. 

"I like things quiet," said Spruill, 58, who sat on a folded-up futon on the sidewalk of Camac Street. "I don't need any trouble."

Spruill has done his job. He voted weeks ago by absentee ballot, which means his vote may be among the paper ballots still being counted inside the convention center, one of 360,000 votes left to count in Pennsylvania that could decide the presidential election. 

The stakes could hardly be higher. On Thursday afternoon, Trump's campaign won a court order that temporarily halted the Pennsylvania count, and that allowed Republican Party operatives to stand closer to the workers who are doing the counting. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign and members of the Philadelphia City Commission, which is responsible for overseeing the process, vowed that the count would continue.

"Trump is trying to steal the election!" said Andrea Williams, 32, a Philadelphia resident who attended the protest at the convention center. "We have to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen."

Republicans at the protest agreed the stakes were high.

"The Democrats want to take this election by corruption," said Dion Cini, a Republican activist who drove from his home in New York City to attend the rally. "I usually don't come to protests like this. But I figure this one's too important to miss."

Nobody passing by believed Spruill was important. Platoons of police officers on bicycles cycled by, followed by a group of Trump supporters, and then a few dozen Biden supporters wearing yellow T-shirts that read "Count Every Vote."

None of them stopped to talk to Spruill, which suited him just fine. 

"It's humbling to be homeless," he said. "I never thought I'd be out here like this.”

Before the coronavirus hit, Spruill worked full time through a temporary employment agency, fixing food for students at Villanova University. The temp agency laid him off as COVID-19 forced a broad economic shutdown earlier this year, he said. 

For that, Spruill blames Trump.

"He didn't take this virus seriously enough," Spruill said of Trump. "Maybe if he had had done his job a little better, I would have never lost my job."

With no income, Spruill lost his studio apartment in North Philadelphia. Now he sleeps on the brick floor of Saint John's Hospice, a program for homeless people run by Catholic Social Services, across Race Street from the convention center. 

"It's better than sleeping outside on the concrete," Spruill said. 

Rebuilding a life is slow work. The temp agency hired Spruill back a few days a week. He spent a few weeks handing out his resume to shopkeepers in Philadelphia's Center City. On Monday, the day before the 2020 election, Spruill finally started his second job, as a cashier at a Rite Aid pharmacy. 

He figures it'll take three weeks to save up the $1,500 he needs to move into a new apartment. 

"I just try to stay out of the way," he said. "I find that as long as I'm here on the sidewalk, don't nobody bother me." 

In the sky, two police helicopters hovered. A block away Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, and Corey Lewandowski, a Trump confidant and former manager of Trump's 2016 campaign, yelled above the crowd that the vote count should stop. 

A protester named Tony Ortiz screamed "Count! The! Vote!" as loudly as he could.

Cini stood behind a metal police barrier from Ortiz, waiving his flag for Trump

"You know Boaters for Trump? I co-founded that," said Cini, 52, of New York City. "I invented the phrase 'Make America Great' six months before Trump used it. You should Google me."

All these people, important and self-important, gathered on the street in Philadelphia, which for a few hours on Thursday appeared to be one of the most important streets in America. With all the noise, quiet Spruill did not seem very important at all. But he has a lot at stake. Trump's incompetence cost Spruill his job. Now Spruill has a vote to be counted. 

"If they don't count every vote, that means the process doesn't matter," Spruill said. "If I'm going to vote, it's supposed to count."