The 7am warehouse parties that want to turn the US election ‘on its head’

In the lead-up to the US election we will be sending a special Harris v Trump edition of our What in the World newsletter every Tuesday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.

North Carolina: It’s shortly after 7am in the city of Durham – one hour before early voting centres open across the state – and I’m in a converted warehouse with strangers, dancing for democracy.

Despite my severe lack of sleep and caffeine, the energy is infectious. At the front of the room, a female DJ is mixing electro beats while a group of young musicians take turns to jam alongside her – some saxophone here; a bit of bongo drums there.

To my left, a woman in purple spandex is performing a masterful pole dance while her friends cheer her on; to my right, a man stomps joyfully to the music, his singlet emblazoned with the words: Freedom In Every Vote.

Welcome to Party to the Polls, one of many initiatives designed to get Americans fired up to vote in this year’s historic showdown between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

The event – similar ones are taking place in swing states across the country – begins with a one-hour boogie, before participants take the party through the streets and to the nearest early voting centre, where everyone then casts an early ballot for the November 5 election.

“Party to the Polls is an initiative to get people to the polls and a way of celebrating your right and your privilege to vote,” co-founder Eli Clark-Davis tells me as we reach the polling booths at Durham County Public Library, where the festivities continue outside.

“Voting should be something that’s exciting. It should be something that we can all do together… but right now in our country we just have a problem talking to each other. We have a problem respecting each other’s opinions, so we’re just hoping to find some love and bring back some joy into civic action. No matter who you’re voting for today, we are celebrating our right to do so.”

While voting may be compulsory in Australia (something that often surprises Americans) it’s optional in the freedom-loving United States.

This has resulted in much of the population sitting out elections rather than having a say in who becomes their next president.

In the 2020 match-up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, for instance, a record 159 million Americans cast a vote, but this represented only about 67 per cent of eligible voters. About 80 million others didn’t take part.

This year, in an election likely to come down to the wire, neither Harris nor Trump is willing to leave anything to chance.

To encourage people to turn up in force, Harris’ campaign has enlisted everyone from former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to Grammy award-winning artists Usher and Lizzo.

As the last leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour began in Florida last week, Democrats even launched a Swift-themed campaign across the battleground states, involving Snapchat filters and ads directing fans to the website IWillVote.com, which provides information about voting, registration and other questions young people may have about the election.

And on Saturday, Harris is bringing out Michelle Obama, one of the Democratic Party’s most popular figures, to get more people to the polls in Michigan, where the vice president faces an ongoing backlash from the Arab American community over the war in Gaza.

Trump, for his part, is also doing what he can to bank in early votes. At a rally I attended in Pennsylvania, there were even stalls urging people to cast a mail-in ballot – the very thing he railed against at the last election, and still often does.

“We have to get rid of mail-in ballots because once you have mail-in ballots, you have crooked elections,” Trump said in January after he won the Iowa caucus.

Trump is also getting help from tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who not only endorsed him moments after the former president’s near-death experience in July, but also set up a fundraising committee that plunged more than $US70 million ($105 million) into helping Trump and other Republicans get elected.

Musk has now been accused of illegally paying for votes after announcing he would give away $US1 million ($1.49 million) a day to registered voters in Pennsylvania – a key swing state where he is campaigning on Trump’s behalf.

Party to the Polls, however, does not advocate for any individual candidate. The initiative is run by Daybreaker, a social experiment that began more than a decade ago as a drug-free, sunrise party designed to “turn nightlife on its head”.

From the first Daybreaker gig in the basement of a Union Square coffee shop in New York, the movement has now expanded to mobilise people ahead of US elections.

The group is currently on a 40-city pre-election tour, with a host of special guests. Last weekend, for instance, hip hop maestro Lil’ Jon joined voters in the battleground of Nevada; this Wednesday, American rapper Yung Gravy will headline a party in swing state of Wisconsin.

“We’re in a really challenging time in America right now, so coming together unified – regardless of your point of view – is a good thing,” says North Carolina resident Lorna Madill, who I met on the dance floor in Durham as I busted out the Melbourne shuffle.

“I think underneath it all, everyone just wants some connection, safety and community.”

What to know:

• Early voting has begun in most of the country, with more than 1.5 million people heading to the polls in Georgia alone, which is on track to the previous record.
• Trump is ramping up his personal attacks against Kamala Harris, describing her as a “shit vice president” and taking aim at her intellect as the race hits its final two weeks.
• The US is investigating the leak of a pair of highly classified intelligence documents describing Israel’s preparations for a retaliatory strike on Iran.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.