Long division

摘要

TUCKED AWAY on a side street, in a strip mall between a barber and a couple of empty storefronts, Panaderia Oaxaquena, a modest bakery that smells of yeast and cinnamon, is a hub for Columbus's growing Latino population. For 20 years, the Cruz-Santos family has been baking conchas, bo-lillos, and pan de yema; some of their customers, says Alfa Cruz-Santos, the 22-year-old daughter of the owners, stop in twice a day, every day. But after the 2016 election, their customers began calling them to ask if they would deliver bread instead. "People were asking if it was safe to go out," says Ms Cruz-Santos. Over the course of those anxious conversations, the Cruz-Santos family began encouraging their customers, many of them first-generation Americans, to do something that they had not previously done: vote. Precise turnout figures will not be known for weeks, but the New York Times estimates that more than 114m people cast ballots-fewer than the 138m people who voted in the 2016 presidential election, but well over the 83m who turned out for the last mid-terms, in 2014.