Election Day is here. Voters are gearing up to head to the polls to cast their ballots for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in one of the nation’s most historic presidential races. They’ll also be determining which party will control the House and Senate.
Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest:
Michigan voters are deciding between Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Republican former congressman Mike Rogers in a tight U.S. Senate battleground contest that could sway the balance of federal power.
Slotkin had a clear head start, but as Republicans became more confident about Donald Trump’s presidential prospects in Michigan, the contest drew more attention from funders who believed Rogers had a good chance of becoming the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat in the state in 30 years.
The race could determine whether Democrats continue to hold their slim majority in the Senate, where they’re defending more seats than Republicans in this election.
▶ Read more about Michigan’s Senate race
Only a slice of America knew Tony Hinchcliffe before he took the stage at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in late October.
But what the comic said that night — namely calling Puerto Rico a “ floating island of garbage ” — not only made him known nationwide but also thrust him into the core of presidential politics.
While the Trump campaign attempted to distance itself from the joke, the Republican candidate never apologized, allowing Harris to take full advantage. Democrats cite that joke, and its aftermath, as the turning point in their effort to win over late-deciding voters.
Harris pressed this advantage on Monday, using precious time in her final day on the campaign trail to rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a city with a large Puerto Rican community, and to drive over an hour to Reading to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant.
Hinchcliffe, in the immediate aftermath of the joke, accused Democrats of having “no sense of humor” and wrote that he “made fun of everyone.” He hasn’t tweeted since.
If Trump loses and Hinchcliffe’s joke is a turning point, his appearance could go down as the most influential comedy set of all time.
There’s one way to make a long line at a polling place seem like it’s moving a bit faster: Play music.
In four battleground states — Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania — the non-partisan group Joy to the Polls has DJs and performers out and about, helping voters pass the time.
In Arizona this morning, voters at one location stood in line (and, yes, a few tapped their feet) to the sounds of Queen, Arrested Development, Freddie Jackson and more.
Part of the group’s mantra: “You bring the vote, we bring the music!”
Election Day voting unfolded largely smoothly across the nation Tuesday but with scattered reports of extreme weather, ballot printing errors and technical problems causing delays.
Most of the hiccups occurring by mid-day were “largely expected routine and planned-for events,” said Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a press briefing. She said the agency was not currently tracking any national, significant incidents impacting election security.
Helping voting run relatively smoothly on Election Day was the fact that tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots. Those included record numbers of voters in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.
▶ Read more about how Election Day is going so far
Asked about the measure, which would keep the state’s six-week restriction in place, he avoided answering by simply saying he’d done “a great job bringing it back to the states.”
The second time, he snapped at a reporter, saying: “You should stop talking about it.”
Trump had previously indicated he would back the measure, but then changed his mind, saying he would vote against it.
The abortion measure would prevent lawmakers from passing any law that penalizes, prohibits, delays or restricts abortion until fetal viability, which doctors say is sometime after 21 weeks. If it’s rejected, the state’s current abortion law would stand.
In the small county seat of Butler, Pennsylvania, voter turnout was brisk at city center precincts, just a few miles from where Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 13.
Voters and an elections official said the process was going smoothly.
Several voters were about evenly split between Trump and Harris, even as surrounding neighborhoods and countryside were overwhelmingly marked with Trump signs and flags, some depicting a photo of him raising his fist in the moments after the shooting.
Elizabeth Nanni said she voted for Harris, saying the candidate is “infinitely smarter “ than her opponent, though she voted Republican in some down-ballot races.
Like others, she said Butler still feels the trauma of July 13.
“We’re not used to having people shot and killed in Butler,” she said. “Hopefully that will be the first and last time anything like that happens here.”
Louis Fell, who voted for Trump, said he didn’t think the shooting changed anyone’s decision about whom to vote for, but it affected the community.
“I feel more connected to the whole thing. We’re not just a small town in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
A provisional ballot is used to ensure every registered voter can cast a ballot in an election. The unique kind of ballot is cast when there are questions about a voter’s registration status, whether they don’t have photo identification in a state that requires it, or, in some cases, if the voter made an error on their mail-in ballot. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 guarantees access to a provisional ballot.
According to MIT’s Election Lab, how exactly provisional ballots are handled varies from each state, but they’re segregated from traditionally cast ballots on Election Day so each ballot’s status can be determined. According to the Election Administration and Voting Survey compiled by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, roughly 700,000 provisional ballots were cast in federal elections in 2022, and around 550,000 were counted.
Last week, the United States Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal from Republicans that could have led to thousands of provisional ballots not being counted in Pennsylvania. The ruling will let voters cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if their mail-in ballot is to be rejected for a garden-variety error.
In a new video posted early Election Day, Beyoncé cosplays as Pamela Anderson in the television program “Baywatch” — red one-piece swimsuit and all — and asks viewers to vote.
In the two-and-a-half minute clip, set to most of “Bodyguard,” a cut from her 2024 country album “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé channels the blonde bombshell before concluding with a simple message, written in white text: “Happy Beylloween,” followed by “Vote.”
At a rally for Donald Trump in Pittsburgh on Monday night, the former president spoke dismissively about Beyoncé’s appearance at a Kamala Harris rally in Houston last month, drawing boos for the megastar from his supporters.
“Beyoncé would come in. Everyone’s expecting a couple of songs. There were no songs. There was no happiness,” Trump said.
She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Cleveland — but she endorsed the vice president and gave a moving speech.
“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said. “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided.”
The Harris campaign has taken on Beyonce’s track “Freedom,” a cut from her landmark 2016 album “Lemonade,” as its anthem.
A man was arrested in upstate New York on Tuesday for threatening to burn down a polling site after he was told his registration wasn’t current, police said.
The man went to vote in the town of Fowler near the Canadian border around 6:30 a.m., New York State Police said in a news release.
The man, who had previously been convicted of a felony, was told he was ineligible to vote because he had not re-registered after being released from prison.
The man became irate and began threatening to return with a gun or to burn the place down, police said.
The man fled but was later picked up by state police and brought to the station for questioning. Charges against him were pending.
“If it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge,” the results, Trump said, though what meets that definition wasn’t clear.
Speaking to reporters after voting in Florida, Trump said that he had no plans to tell his supporters to refrain from violence should he lose.
“I don’t have to tell them,” because they “are not violent people,” he said.
Trump planned to visit a nearby campaign office to thank those working on his behalf.
“I’m hearing in Pennsylvania they won’t have an answer ’til two or three days from now,” Trump said. “I think it’s an absolute outrage if that’s the case.”
Trump says he will have “a very special group of people” at Mar-a-Lago and a few thousand people at a nearby convention center to watch the election results.
“It looks like we have a very substantial lead,” he said without elaborating on whether he has a plan on when to declare victory.
Tara Palmeri, a reporter with Puck, had been assigned by Amazon to cover Donald Trump’s election night event at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. But she was denied a credential to get in, according to Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita, who described her as a “gossip columnist” in a post on the social platform X.
Instead, Amazon will fly Palmeri to its California studio, where she will be on-set with the former NBC News anchor Williams, who is hosting the streaming service’s first-ever election night live coverage. The change was first reported by the Status news website.
Amazon said Palmeri will be replaced at Trump’s Florida headquarters by New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan.
In Palm Beach, Florida, Marilyn Falotico said she believes Trump is the president who will deliver best for the Sunshine State and the rest of the country.
“Without him, things in Florida might not happen,” Falotico said.
Falotico says the country she’s living in “is not the country I was born into, so I’m voting for America.”
“It seems that the conservatives are voting very powerfully,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida.
“It looks like Republicans have shown up in force,” he said.
Asked if he had any regrets about his campaign, Trump responded, “I can’t think of any.”
A Pennsylvania state judge on Tuesday ordered polls to remain open for two extra hours in Cambria County, which sought the extension after a software malfunction affected ballot-scanning machines.
County officials said the problem caused some voter confusion, with some leaving without casting a ballot, as well as long lines at some locations. They stressed, along with state officials, that no one was being turned away from the polls and all ballots would be counted.
“It seems that the conservatives are voting very powerfully,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida.
“It looks like Republicans have shown up in force,” he said.
Asked if he had any regrets about his campaign, Trump responded, “I can’t think of any.”
Trump has cast his ballot in Palm Beach, Florida and says his latest presidential campaign was the best yet.
“I ran a great campaign. I think it was maybe the best of the three. We did great in the first one. We did much better in the second one but something happened. I would say this is the best campaign we’ve run,” he said, standing next to his wife, Melania Trump.
He has no public appearances on his schedule and his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, won’t be holding her typical daily briefing on Tuesday.
Biden made his final campaign appearance on Saturday when he delivered a speech to laborers on behalf of the Harris-Walz campaign in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
He hasn’t taken a question from reporters since gaggling at an event in Baltimore last Tuesday. Later that same day, Biden created an uproar in remarks to Latino activists when he responded to racist comments at a Trump rally made by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
Biden, according to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, told the Latino group on a Tuesday evening video call, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The transcript released by the White House press office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” which aides said pointed to Biden criticizing Hinchcliffe, not the millions of Americans who are supporting Trump for president.
In Arizona, puppies hit the polls on Election Day.
Joe Casados of the Arizona Humane Society went to the polls with Daphne, a 10-week-old puppy available for adoption.
“We know that voting can be a stressful time for a lot of people. We also want to celebrate everyone doing their civic duty and coming out to vote,” Casados said. “So, we thought what better way than bringing some puppies out to the polls to give someone a little reward and a little serotonin boost just for coming out today and voting.”
Casados said voters thanked them for bringing the puppies.
“I think everyone is very excited whenever they get a chance to see a puppy,” Casados said.
Voter fatigue is a real thing for some at the polls today.
Ky Thompson, who voted in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said she’s happy that the election cycle is ending.
“It was a good fight between both parties and hopefully we don’t get any whining like we’ve been getting the last couple years, depending on who wins or who loses in this,” Thompson said. “I’m just over it today. I’m over this whole election like I’m sure the rest of America is.”
She did not reveal her presidential choice.
“If you’re taking care of yourself the way you should be taking care of yourself, not too much of what goes on should affect you too, too, too, too much,” she said, smiling.
“The first office I ever ran for was freshman class representative at Howard University,” Harris recalled in her Tuesday interview with the Big Tigger Morning Show on V-103 in Atlanta. “And to go back tonight to Howard University, my beloved alma mater, and be able to hopefully … recognize this day for what it is — really it’s full circle for me.”
Howard, located in the nation’s capital, is part of a network of historically Black colleges and universities founded before 1964 for African American students.
If she wins, Harris will be the first HBCU alum to serve as president.
A Pennsylvania state judge on Tuesday ordered polls to remain open for two extra hours in Cambria County, which sought the extension after a software malfunction affected ballot-scanning machines.
County officials say the problem caused voter confusion, with some people leaving without casting a ballot, as well as long lines at some locations. They stressed, though, that no one was being turned away from the polls and all ballots would be counted, as did state officials.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is hoping to brush back a challenge from Republican John Deaton on Tuesday as she seeks a third term representing Massachusetts.
Deaton, an attorney who moved to the state from Rhode Island earlier this year, tried to portray the former Harvard Law School professor as out of touch with ordinary Bay State residents.
Warren cast herself as a champion for an embattled middle class and a critic of regulations benefitting the wealthy. Warren has remained popular in the state despite coming in third in Massachusetts in her 2020 bid for president.
Warren first burst onto the national scene during the 2008 financial crisis with calls for tougher consumer safeguards, resulting in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She has gone on to become one of her party’s most prominent liberal voices.
▶ Read more about the Massachusetts Senate race
Geoff Grace has a tremor, and filling out the little circles on his Wisconsin ballot was a difficult task.
But he got it done — with some help from his mother — and got a round of applause from poll workers for getting through the process when his ballot was deposited.
“They were very nice and accommodating for that,” Grace said. “And I got my sticker. I’m showing that off today.”
Grace voted for Harris. “I strongly believe a woman should have a chance at being president,” he said.
When you hear the term bellwether, you might think about states in the presidential election that always vote with the White House winner. The true meaning of a bellwether is an indicator of a trend. For that, you need to think about counties.
Across the seven main battleground states in 2024, there are 10 counties — out of more than 500 — that voted for Trump in 2016 and then flipped to Biden in 2020. Most are small and home to relatively few voters, with Arizona’s Maricopa a notable exception. So it’s not likely they’ll swing an entire state all by themselves.
What these counties probably will do is provide an early indication of which candidate is performing best among the swing voters likely to decide a closely contested race. It doesn’t take much for a flip. For example, the difference in Wisconsin, during both 2016 and 2020, was only about 20,000 votes.
▶ Read more about the states that might matter the most on Election Day
St. Clair County Probate Judge Andrew Weathington said the problem was discovered Tuesday morning when packs of sealed ballots were opened at polling places and many were found to be missing the back page, which contains proposed constitutional amendments.
He said it appeared to be a printing error.
The proposed ballots were proofed before printing and were correct, he added. The Alabama Secretary of State’s Office confirmed emergency ballots are being printed.
The ACLU of Alabama has asked the St. Clair probate office to extend voting hours by the number of hours it takes to get new ballots, a spokesman for the organization said. Weathington said he is seeking legal guidance from the Alabama secretary of state and the county attorney.
Alabama voters are deciding local constitutional amendments and one statewide amendment. The statewide amendment relates to allowing a local school board to sell land, located in another Alabama county, to a developer. Voters in the county were also voting on a local amendment related to local school board governance.
Florida voters turning to a state-run website to check their voter registration status were getting an error message Tuesday morning.
A spokesperson for Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd confirmed the state’s online Voter Information Lookup tool was experiencing technical issues but did not answer questions about what was causing the problem.
“We’re working to resolve it,” spokesperson Mark Ard said. “We’re providing alternative websites and locations for voters to find their voter information, their precinct.”
Floridians can check their voter registration status and find their polling place by going to their county supervisor of elections website.
Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency, said during a briefing that “we are not currently tracking any national level, significant incidents impacting the security of our election infrastructure. We are tracking instances of extreme weather and other temporary infrastructure disruption to certain areas of the country, but these are largely expected routine and planned for events.”
Conley said CISA, the FBI and intelligence communities did anticipate that foreign actors would try to influence the election later today and in the following weeks.
South Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace is trying to cement her hold on her seat in a state that doesn’t mind sending people back to Congress for decades.
There have been questions over whether Mace’s attention-seeking personality and brashness and willingness to buck her party’s establishment could be a liability. But so far, she’s been embraced by her coastal 1st District.
Mace flipped the seat back to Republicans in 2020 after a stunning upset of incumbent Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham. She fought off a GOP challenger endorsed by former President Donald Trump in 2022 and breezed to a surprisingly easy win — this time with Trump’s backing — in the 2024 Republican primary without a runoff.
Her fellow Republicans in the South Carolina General Assembly also did her a favor by redrawing the district and sending traditional Democratic precincts in and around downtown Charleston to the state’s only majority-minority district. Under the old map in 2020, Mace won less than 51% of the vote. With the new maps in 2022 she received more than 56%.
Mace’s Democratic challenger as voting ends Tuesday is businessman and former International African American Museum CEO Michael Moore. His campaign has struggled to gain momentum and Mace has barely acknowledged he’s in the race.
▶ Read more about the South Carolina House race
It’s practically an Election Day tradition now. The news media gathers in tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, a picturesque town near the Canadian border, to watch the first voters cast their ballots at midnight.
Dixville Notch started its tradition in 1960. Neil Tillotson, who owned the town’s Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, heard about midnight voting from an Associated Press reporter, his son Tom told CBS News. The elder petitioned the legislature to let the community create its own voting precinct.
Even though two other towns had midnight voting — including one that opened early for railroad workers — Dixville Notch was the only one with a hotel that made it convenient for reporters and photographers to file, with phone lines and a dark room. The first polling place was inside Tillotson’s resort.
Per the tradition, AP reporter Nick Perry was on hand when a half-dozen voters cast their ballots at the polling place, which has moved to the living room of the Tillotson home. He documented the scene, and made sure not to miss that the polling place featured “ a couple of very friendly dogs.”
There are no NFL or NBA games today. Plenty of fans will be going to stadiums anyway.
At least 17 NFL and NBA facilities are either polling locations or ballot drop-off stations. Some teams even offered voters personalized “I Voted” stickers with team logos.
Tuesdays aren’t game days in the NFL.
The NBA, for the third consecutive year, isn’t playing any games on Election Day to support “civic engagement,” the league said. And players from all 30 NBA teams wore warm-up shirts with a simple message Monday night: “Vote,” they said.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman issued the order late Monday after lawyers for Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss — two former Georgia election workers who were awarded a $148 million defamation judgment — reported to the court that Rudy Giuliani cleared out his Manhattan apartment weeks before the Oct. 29 deadline to surrender his possessions.
Lawyers for Freeman and Moss say Giuliani has not yet surrendered any of the items that he was ordered to turn over — including his $5 million New York apartment, a 1980 Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall and a variety of other belongings including sports memorabilia.
Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman said Tuesday that Giuliani has made his property available and accused Freeman and Moss’ lawyers of deception and attempting to “further bully and intimidate Mayor Giuliani until he is rendered penniless and homeless.”
Giuliani was ordered to pay the former election workers for falsely accusing them of ballot fraud during the 2020 presidential election, as part of Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him.