Election Day 2024 started early Tuesday with winds of change beckoning, steady streams of election voters heading into polling places and an urgency for individuals to express their voices through their ballots.

Voters were keenly aware that the consequences of the presidential election between former president Donald. J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris could be enormous for all Americans, and that measures on the state ballot carried weight for the lives of Californians.

“The Republic is strong,” Navy veteran Bob Johnson of Lafayette said outside the city’s Veteran Memorial Building, where he and others voted. “It has endured more than 200 years for a reason with the checks and balances we’ve had. And I believe that will continue.

“At the same time, it’s kind of like a fork in the road right now. Do we want to come together. Do we want to continue to be partisan? It’s sort of, ‘What road do you want to take, America?’ ”

In Contra Costa County, early-morning voters at the Memorial Building and Bay Church in Concord called for more unity and an end to divisiveness and chaos. They said that issue was the one that most concerned them and was the reason they were so eager to vote.

That enthusiasm was not universal: Ben Siemens, a 48-year-old Santa Clara resident, said outside of the voting center at the Muslim Community Association Banquet Hall that he was not really excited to vote in this election and didn’t fully support any candidate in any race. As a voter, he said Proposition 2 stood out to him, which would authorize $10 billions in bonds for K-12 school maintenance, community colleges and career technical education programs, but none of the propositions were “massively impactful in my day-to-day.”

“Most of it is just incidental taxes that are added or not added to my daily life, unless, of course, there’s a civil war, which I hope there isn’t,” Siemens said.

Some Bay Area voters said they were largely motivated to vote in order to preserve a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body. East San Jose resident Vivian Tran, a cardiac ultrasound student at the Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, said as she voted at the PayPal Town Hall in San Jose that she always has felt it normal for women to have full reproductive rights and they never should be taken away from her.

“When it was kind of raising the question when Roe v. Wade was overturned, well, what do you guys mean? Like what do you mean?” Tran said. “We’ve had these rights since the day I was born, so why are we getting them taken away?”

Voters seemed also to be connected on their concern over the quality of life their children may inherit.

“Honestly, it’s kind of either-or,” Milpitas resident Julisa Flores, 26, said of the presidential contest. She was casting her vote at Pioneer Mobile Park. She said that “I certainly hope (whoever wins) stick(s) to the policies they talked about. That’s going to be super important for the future.”

More than one voter said they were keeping a close eye on Proposition 36, which proposes to increase the prosecutions of certain drug and theft crimes and make sentences more severe.

“People should be getting in way more trouble for ripping off stores and store owners that way,” said Dwayne Bonilla of Martinez. “This whole business of the smash-and-grabs has got to stop.”

In the South Bay, some people expressed eagerness to vote on races and propositions that more directly affected them. Phillip Rodriguez, a 44-year-old Milpitas resident, turned out at the voting center at Pioneer Mobile Home Park, saying that while he was not excited to vote in the national races, he was more excited to cast his ballot in the local races, such as the Milpitas mayoral election and Measure J, which would prevent a tax hike to maintain local services and quality of life and keep the quarter-cent sales tax for another eight years.

“(These election results) would affect me and my daughter and my granddaughter and grandchildren down the line, so I hope I voted effectively,” Rodriguez said.

The election in the Bay Area unfolded against the backdrop of possible power shutdowns from PG&E because of a red flag warning for fire danger. Oakland Fire spokesperson Michael Hunt said a polling location in Joaquin Miller Park was closed because of safety concerns, though it had not been subject to a planned power shutdown.

Staff writer Harry Harris contributed to this report.