The Latest: Trump and Harris cede stage to voters who’ll also decide control of House and Senate
The Latest: Trump and Harris cede stage to voters who’ll also decide control of House and Senate
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:
What is a provisional ballot?
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.
Beyoncé channels Pamela Anderson for ‘BEYWATCH’ video, asks viewers to vote
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.
Man arrested in upstate New York for threatening to burn down a polling site
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.
Trump is suggesting he won’t challenge the results of the election — as long as it’s fair
“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.
Trump says paper ballots and 1-day voting should be the norm
“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.
Brian Williams’ election night streamcast on Amazon has been forced to change plans
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.
Voter Voice: ‘Without him, things in Florida might not happen’
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.”
Trump says ‘I feel very confident’ after casting his ballot
“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.”
After software problems, voting hours will be extended in a Pennsylvania county
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.
Trump says ‘I feel very confident’ after casting his ballot
“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.”
The Trumps cast their ballots in Palm Beach
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.
Biden is laying low at the White House on Election Day
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.
Pick a politician … and a puppy?
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 Voice: ‘I’m over this whole election like I’m sure the rest of America is’
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.
Harris looking forward to an election night party at her alma mater
“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.
After software problems, voting hours will be extended in a Pennsylvania county
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.
Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren seeks third term in US Senate against challenger John Deaton
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
Voter Voice: ‘I got my sticker. I’m showing that off today’
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.
Where are the voters who could decide the presidential election?
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
An Alabama county is printing emergency ballots after discovering a missing page
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’s voter information website is experiencing issues
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.
Foreign election interference issues quiet so far
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.
Nancy Mace tries to cement her hold on her US House seat in South Carolina
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
Why you hear about Dixville Notch every presidential election
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.”
NFL, NBA facilities in use on Election Day
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.
Giuliani ordered to appear in court after missing deadline to turn over possessions
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.
Harris campaign stresses patience as votes are tallied
The seven battleground states have varying rules on when votes are counted, so it is expected to take some time before all votes are tallied in the key states that are expected to decide the razor-tight race.
“We’re going to be patient,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said during a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC. “We’re going to be very focused on what’s happening in the early part of the night. But we know some of our bigger battleground states are not going to be fully tallied until later in the night or early in the morning.”
O’Malley Dillon was hopeful that early turnout in Georgia and North Carolina was a positive sign for the Harris campaign.
By the time early voting in North Carolina had ended on Saturday, over 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots. It was particularly robust in the 25 western counties affected by Hurricane Helene and was even stronger at 59% of registered voters.
Georgia meanwhile saw more than 4 million voters cast early ballots, a record-breaking number for the state.
Voter Voice: Harris is ‘going to go out and get the ball’ on Social Security
Atlanta audio-visual technician Mark Butler wasn’t working on Tuesday and planned to watch election coverage after he cast his ballot in the morning.
He said he voted for Harris.
“What matters to me is Social Security,” Butler said. “I think she’s going to go out and get the ball on that one.”
Butler, a lifelong Atlanta resident, said he’s fully aware of the weight Georgia will likely carry in deciding who wins the White House.
“It’s very important. We’re a swing state, probably one of the most important swing states,” he said.
Democrats hope to flip a reliably Republican Louisiana congressional seat with new boundaries
In a critical election year, Democrats are looking to flip a once reliably Republican Louisiana congressional seat, where political boundaries were recently redrawn to form the state’s second mostly Black congressional district.
With five people on the ballot for Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District, Democrats have thrown their support behind longtime politician Cleo Fields, 61. The state senator has been involved in state politics for three decades and served two terms in Congress after being elected in 1992.
Across the aisle, Republicans are looking to preserve the seat, especially in an election year where the GOP is trying to hold on to their majority in the U.S. House. The only Republican on the ballot is former state lawmaker Elbert Guillory, 80.
For nearly 50 years, only one Democrat has won the seat in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District. But the district’s boundaries have recently been recrafted.
▶ Read more about Louisiana’s House race
Migrant caravan starts walking in southern Mexico
Some 2,500 migrants from at least a dozen countries have started walking in southern Mexico, hoping Mexican authorities will allow them to eventually reach the U.S. border.
The caravan departed on U.S. Election Day after a tight race that frequently put immigration at its center.
Those walking voiced more immediate concerns than U.S. politics like safety for their families and job opportunities.
Groups of several hundred to several thousand migrants moving together en masse has become more common in recent years.
In October 2020, a caravan that formed in Honduras ahead of the U.S. election was stopped by authorities in Guatemala. In October 2018, ahead of U.S. midterms, another caravan that started in Honduras grew to about 7,000 and eventually reached the U.S. border.
In recent years, caravans haven’t made it out of southern Mexico.
FBI warns of fabricated videos misusing its name and insignia
A news clip that purports to come from the FBI tells voters that they should vote remotely because of a high terror threat at polling stations.
But the FBI said that the clip is bogus, did not come from the bureau and does not accurately represent concerns about safety at polling locations.
Also false is a video depicting a fabricated FBI press release claiming that the management of prisons in several key battleground states rigged inmate voting and colluded with one of the political parties.
The FBI did not identify anyone who it thought might be responsible for the manufactured videos. Over the past two weeks, the agency has blamed Russian influence actors for a variety of manufactured internet postings and videos officials say were released as part of a broader disinformation campaign.
Puerto Rico will also vote on new House delegate and statehood
Voters in Puerto Rico will elect a new resident commissioner, the island’s representative with limited voting powers in the U.S. House. The outgoing resident commissioner, Jenniffer González of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, is running for governor.
There’s another item on the ballot that involves Congress: statehood. Voters will be asked for a seventh time about Puerto Rico’s political status. The nonbinding referendum offers three options: statehood, independence and independence with free association, under which issues like foreign affairs, U.S. citizenship and use of the U.S. dollar would be negotiated. Regardless of the outcome, a change in status requires approval from Congress.
Nearly 2 million voters are eligible to participate in Tuesday’s election, although it remains to be seen how many people will do so. Voter apathy has dominated recent elections.
The post office is open today, but it may be too late to send your mail-in ballot
The U.S. Postal Service is open as usual on Election Day, but before voters drop their ballots in they should check their state’s deadlines.
Some states require mail-in ballots to arrive byElection Day. Others only require ballots to be postmarked by Election Day. And some states, too, allow mail-in ballots to be dropped off in ballot boxes or at polling places through Election Day.
Voters should check their state election websites to determine the deadlines.
Vance casts his ballot in Ohio
Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance voted in Cincinnati this morning.
“Look, I feel good. You never know until you know, but I feel good about this race,” Vance said after he and his wife cast their ballots.
Vance said he would depart for Palm Beach, Florida, later today to be with Donald Trump as results come in.
Trump and Harris are on the ballot in Puerto Rico. But it’s symbolic
As a presidential campaign that engendered fury on the island over a comedian’s incendiary remarks at a Trump rally culminates, Puerto Ricans can support Harris or Trump in a symbolic vote if they wish. While Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, those on the island are not allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections.
The election is still consequential, as voters will elect a new governor. If Jenniffer González of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party wins, it will mark the first time in the island’s history that the party secures three consecutive terms.
If Juan Dalmau, who is running for Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and Citizen Victory Movement, wins, it will be the first win for a candidate not representing either of the two main parties that have dominated the island’s politics for decades. Voters also will be asked for a seventh time about Puerto Rico’s political status.
Nearly 2 million voters in Puerto Rico are eligible to participate in Tuesday’s election, though it remains to be seen how many will do so. Voter apathy has dominated recent elections.
By The Associated Press
