Election day voting has begun in the United States, with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris vying to become the next president
Harris has advocated for abortion rights and pledged to lower food and housing costs for working families
Trump has vowed to seal the border and has proposed tax cuts worth trillions
Americans aren’t just choosing the president – they’re also picking members of the US Congress, and some states are voting on abortion rights. More than 82 million people voted before election day. When will we know the winner? It could take days – or it could be soon after polls close
Two states lose bids to block election monitors from observing polling stations.
The Department of Justice is sending officials to monitor polling stations in 27 different states. Both Texas and Missouri have been told to allow election monitors from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to observe polling stations after US judges rejected their bids to have officials blocked. To monitor compliance with voting rules, the DOJ had announced that they would be sending lawyers to check polling stations in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states, including some in Texas and Missouri.
It is common practice for the DOJ to send staff to monitor voting locations during national elections. Texas and Missouri had sought to block this procedure in separate legal claims, but two different courts have rejected the states’ arguments.
It’s jovial inside the Trump Store in Cincinnati, Ohio
“Have you been to the Kamala Harris store yet?” asks a customer at the Trump Store on Cincinnati’s outskirts.
“No because there isn’t one!” he chuckles answering his question.
Underlying his joke is a serious point: what other politician, besides Donald Trump, appeals enough to voters to give rise to shops selling merchandise in their name? In Republican-leaning Ohio, there certainly is a market for Trump gear.
We’ll see if that commercial appeal will be enough to get the former president over the line in other, more crucial swing states.
Polls open in four more states, including California and Nevada published at 15:01
It’s just past 07:00 in western US states (15:00 GMT), and polls are officially open in California, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. The only states left to start voting now are Alaska and Hawaii.
California has 54 electoral votes – the most of any state in the US – but is considered a blue wall state as the last time it voted for a Republican candidate was in 1988.
Nevada, which has six electoral votes, is the last of the seven swing states to open polls today.
As a reminder – states award all their electoral college votes to whoever wins the majority of the state’s vote. For example, if a candidate wins 50.1% of the vote in California, they are given all of the state’s 54 electoral votes. A candidate who wins a state by a landslide would still pick up the same number of electoral votes.
You can read more about how the US voting system works
How many votes are available in the swing states?
As the US votes, all eyes are on the swing states that are expected to decide the election.
In presidential elections, states with more people are worth more points, or electoral college votes as they’re known. Across the entire US, there are a total of 538 electoral college votes up for grabs. The winner will be the candidate that wins 270 or more.
The seven states considered key in this election hold 93 electoral college votes between them.
A quiet morning in Michigan due to early voters.
“It’s relatively quiet here in liberal Washtenaw County in Michigan, a state where more than 3.2m people have cast early votes.
That’s over half of the total voters in 2020 when 5.6m people filled out a ballot. Courtney Kutcher walked to the polls in Ann Arbor with her coffee on this warm morning, wanting the satisfaction of seeing her ballot go into the machine on election day.
She voted for Harris because she believes the candidate will “give our kids, both boys and girls, a better future in America”.
The Harris campaign is counting on moms like Kutcher to turn out in large numbers in liberal counties in the state to make up for Trump’s expected wins in more rural areas”
Source: BBC
