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  • Abortion and open primaries are on the ballot in Nevada. What to know about the key 2024 measures

    Abortion and open primaries are on the ballot in Nevada. What to know about the key 2024 measures

    LAS VEGAS (AP) — It’s been more than three decades since Nevada voters overwhelmingly approved a law allowing abortions until 24 weeks of pregnancy. Now they must decide if they want to make it a constitutional right.

    Nevada is one of nine states where abortion rights are on the ballot, as supporters in the state and elsewhere try to strengthen abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that made abortion legal nationwide for 50 years.

    It’s a key issue that could drive voters to the polls in Nevada, a crucial presidential battleground, even if abortion access has been protected by state law since 1990.

    Here’s a closer look at the key ballot measures in Nevada:

    Abortion rights

    The 2024 election is only the first test of the measure seeking to enshrine the right to an abortion until the fetus can survive outside the womb, known as “fetal viability” which doctors say is after 21 weeks, with exceptions to save the mother’s life or protect her health. Voters would again have to approve it in 2026 in order to amend the state constitution.

    It wouldn’t expand current abortion access in the state, but supporters and organizers of the initiative say it adds an extra layer of protection. State laws in Nevada are more vulnerable to change — the current 1990 law could be reversed by another voter referendum — but proposed changes to the state constitution have to pass in two consecutive elections.

    Las Vegas resident Laura Campbell, 36, said she supports the initiative to strengthen Nevada’s abortion access. Without it, Campbell said she isn’t sure she would be alive today.

    At 27 weeks, she said she learned that her pregnancy was nonviable, meaning the fetus couldn’t survive outside her womb. Her doctor took her hand and promised to take care of her.

    “I was able to come out of that healthy and able to get pregnant again,” Campbell said. A year later, she gave birth to her daughter, now 3. “I could have been a tragic story.”

    Opponents say the proposed amendment goes too far because it doesn’t clearly define “fetal viability.”

    “It opens up a huge can of worms,” Davida Rochelle, 68, said.

    Anti-abortion group Nevada Right to Life also said in a recent ad that the initiative is “deceptively worded” because it doesn’t make clear that abortion is already legal in the state.

    Voting process

    Two different measures going before voters could alter the way Nevada residents cast their ballots.

    An initiative to open up primaries and implement ranked choice voting would fundamentally change elections in a key swing state where nonpartisan voters outnumber registered Democrats and Republicans, and where 42% of voters do not belong to one of the major parties. Supporters of the measure say opening up primaries would give a voice to more than 1 million voters in the state who currently do not have a say in the nomination of major-party candidates for Congressional races and statewide office.

    If it passes, all registered voters in Nevada starting in 2026 can vote in primary races for Congress, statewide office and the state Legislature. It would not affect presidential primaries and races for elected office at the local level.

    Under the proposed system, the top five primary candidates, regardless of their political affiliation, would move on to the general election, in which voters would rank by preference up to five candidates. The first candidate to receive more than 50% of the vote would be declared the winner.

    The 2024 election is here. This is what to know:

    News outlets around the world count on the AP for accurate U.S. election results. Since 1848, the AP has been calling races up and down the ballot. Support us. Donate to the AP.

    If none of the candidates immediately win the majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes would then be redistributed to the voter’s next highest ranked candidate. The process would repeat until a winner is declared.

    The citizen-led initiative has faced opposition from both Republican and Democratic party leaders who say ranked choice voting is too confusing.

    Another measure on the ballot would require that voters show photo identification at the polls. It’s the first time the Republican-led measure is going before voters and would have to again pass in 2026.

    Slavery as punishment

    Nevada voters this election could vote to reject slavery or indentured servitude as a criminal punishment, which is still on the books in the state constitution.

    Around 10,000 people are currently imprisoned in Nevada. Some make as little as 35 cents an hour.

    There is no formal opposition against the proposed amendment.

  • How the US elections will unfold overnight for British viewers | US elections 2024

    By late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday, we may know who is going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don’t yet know. Or we may know who’s been projected as the winner but be bracing ourselves for weeks of legal action and protest. It’s going to be that sort of night.

    A reminder of the basics: whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is the next president will be decided by the electoral college, rather than a straight count of the national vote – meaning that the winner will be the person who gets to a simple majority of 270 of the 538 electors on offer across the 50 states, whether or not they get more votes than their opponent nationwide.

    That means that the result is quite likely to come down to who prevails in the seven battleground states identified by both sides as being up for grabs – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, as are 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate. There are also 13 state and territorial governorships to be decided.

    In the UK, the election will be covered across the BBC (including radio), ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and various others. You can get CNN’s US coverage by signing up on its website; it’s also available on Sky. The Guardian live blog is also running, obviously.

    Here is a guide to how the night will unfold. UK residents determined to stick around to the bitter end, whenever that might be, should consider getting some sleep at 8pm or 9pm, and setting alarms (at least six, at three-minute intervals) for midnight or 1am, since not much will happen before then anyway. But pace yourself. For all that we talk about election night, any of the key races – or several of them – could take well into the next day, or longer, to produce a clear result.

    10pm UK (5pm Eastern Time): exit polls give context

    Voting ends in Indiana and most of Kentucky, but neither is in play. Meanwhile, the first batch of exit polls are released. Unlike in the UK, where exit polls are usually a decent guide to the final outcome, the American version offers only a tantalising hint of what may be in store: rather than providing a projection of final results on the basis of asking people at polling stations how they voted, they give a view of what respondents have said the issues that mattered the most to them were.

    They’re based on a bigger sample than typical polls – numbering in the tens of thousands – so they ought to give pretty robust findings. But knowing that voters were motivated by the economy or abortion, for example, will only be a clue to how the night might go, rather than a basis for projecting the result.

    Midnight UK/7pm ET: Georgia and North Carolina – the first clues

    Polls close in nine states over the next hour. Don’t just follow the running count of electoral college votes to get a sense of how it’s going, though: Trump is expected to have the biggest tally coming out of this first batch, however his night is going.

    But polls also close in the first battleground states that could give a major indication of what’s happening: Georgia and North Carolina. Just as importantly, we may start to see whether any clear pattern is emerging that holds true across different states, and therefore provides evidence of what could happen elsewhere.

    We don’t know when any of the states will be called, and even the results in Georgia and North Carolina may not be known for hours – or, and let’s hope not, days – yet. It’s possible that broadcasters and the Associated Press will start to call some states that haven’t even finished counting if they conclude that the other side has no chance of catching up but the closer the race the longer it may take.

    (When we talk about states being “called”, we mean that major news organisations have examined the data and reached a conclusion that it is statistically impossible for the other side to win. Official declarations can take much longer.)

    1am UK/8pm ET: Oh God, it’s Pennsylvania

    Polls close in about half the country – so any nationwide patterns should be becoming clear. But it’s Pennsylvania that matters most. With more electoral votes – 19 – than any other swing state, and polls suggesting that it’s the closest race in the country, this is a huge moment. If Trump wins, tell your friends that it was madness for Harris not to pick the state’s popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate; if Harris wins, you can muse that the insults hurled towards the state’s 470,000 Puerto Ricans at a recent Trump rally might have made the difference.

    Again, the polls closing doesn’t necessarily mean a quick declaration. In Pennsylvania, rules against counting mail-in ballots before polls close are likely to slow things down. So it might end up being one of the later races to be called among the key states. It took four days in 2020.

    Whenever they come, if Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina all go in one candidate’s favour, it will be very difficult for the other to win. If we don’t get that sort of news by now, find some caffeine or a cocktail and pin your eyelids to your forehead: we might be in for a long night.

    2am UK/9pm ET: Three more battleground states

    In this hour, polls will close in 15 states, including three of the four remaining battlegrounds: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. But Wisconsin wasn’t called until after 2pm the following day in 2016 or 2020. Arizona took more than a week in 2020, and there are more onerous rules in place around the count this time.

    It was around now in 2016 – 2.29am, to be precise – that AP called the race for Trump, with Clinton calling to concede a few minutes later In 2020, the result wasn’t called for four more days (the following Saturday).

    Another interesting state to watch now: Iowa, where a shock poll at the weekend gave Harris a lead of three points in a state generally assumed to be a sure thing for Trump, who won it at the last two elections. If that bears out in reality, it probably won’t make a difference to the overall outcome – but only because it is likely to indicate that Harris has had a better night than expected in other similar states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.

    By now, Trump is likely to have a solid-looking lead in the running electoral college count you’ll probably see on screen – but that is expected to start whittling down as polls close in big, solid blue states, including New York and California, from this point. But if and when those six swing states where polls have closed by now are called, it’s very likely that the result will be apparent.

    3am UK/10pm ET: Nevada

    Polls close in Nevada, the last swing state, this hour. It’s unlikely that its eight electoral college votes will be decisive but if they are, things are probably going to feel uncertain for a while yet. It took 88 hours to call the state in 2020.

    Another question will be whether either candidate comes out to speak to their supporters, and when. Everything Trump has said suggests that it is very unlikely that he will concede defeat on election night, except in the unlikely event of a landslide against him. (In 2020, he made a speech at the White House at 2.21am ET in which he made his first false claims of electoral fraud.)

    The tone he and Harris strike in these hours and afterwards will give a sense of whether the result is going to be accepted all round – or if we could be in for a much more febrile period.

    4am/11pm ET: California, Alaska and everything after

    The last polls close over the next two hours and, while it is just about theoretically possible that it could all come down to Alaska, I wouldn’t bet your house on it. What seems significantly more likely is: whatever the candidates have said, if the race looks close, lawyers for both sides will be gearing up for court challenges in key states – while pro-Trump poll watchers and other supporters are likely to be making numerous claims of election interference.

    Last time around, exhaustive legal processes found similar claims to be without foundation but that doesn’t mean they won’t be repeated. It is entirely possible that we will have a clear call of a result from the major networks by this time – but that everything will still appear to be in flux.

  • Live Results: New Jersey 10th Congressional District Special Primary

    Live Results: New Jersey 10th Congressional District Special Primary

    By 270toWin Staff

    July 16, 2024, 1:43 PM ET

    The death of Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April created a vacancy in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district. Party nominees will be chosen Tuesday, with a special general election on September 18.

    The winner of the special election will serve through the end of the year.

    Polls close at 8:00 PM Eastern.

    Democratic Primary

    Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1 in this Newark-area district; Payne won his final term by a 78% to 20% margin in 2022. As such, this primary has drawn a lot of interest. 

    Eleven Democrats are on the ballot. Most of the party establishment is behind Newark City Council president LaMonica McIver.

    Other notables include “Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker (D-Jersey City), former East Orange Councilwoman Brittany Claybrooks, Linden Mayor Derek Armstead, and state economic development official Darryl Godfrey.”

    In a related note, Payne’s death occurred after ballots were printed for the state’s regular June primary. Payne was unopposed, and was posthumously renominated for the November general election.

    Party officials in the affected counties (Essex, Hudson, Union) will choose a ballot replacement at a convention this Thursday. It could be the same person that wins Tuesday’s primary, although it is not required to be.

    Republican Primary

    Businessman Carmen Bucco is unopposed for the Republicans. He also had no opposition in the June primary, so will be on the ballot again in November.

    Upcoming Elections and Events

    Down-ballot primaries will continue through early September. The remaining ones are listed below, along with other contests we’ll be tracking during that period.

    • July 15-18

      • Republican National Convention

    • July 30

      • Arizona Primary

        • Includes mayoral primaries in Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, and Scottsdale

      • Wisconsin State Senate District 4 Special General

    • August 1

    • August 6

      • Kansas Primary

      • Michigan Primary

      • Missouri Primary

      • Washington Top-Two Primary

    • August 10

      • Hawaii Primary

      • Hawaii State Senate District 5 (Special Primary)

      • Honolulu Mayor (Primary)

    • August 13

      • Connecticut Primary

      • Minnesota Primary

      • Vermont Primary

      • Wisconsin Primary

      • Wisconsin U.S. House District 8 Special Primary

      • Minnesota State Senate District 45 Special Primary

    • August 19-22

      • Democratic National Convention

    • August 20

      • Alaska Top-Four Primary

      • Florida Primary

      • Wyoming Primary

    • August 27

    • September 3

    • September 10

      • Delaware Primary

      • New Hampshire Primary

      • Rhode Island Primary

  • هل تعرقل الانتخابات الأميركية مسيرة البيتكوين الصاعدة في نوفمبر؟

    هل تعرقل الانتخابات الأميركية مسيرة البيتكوين الصاعدة في نوفمبر؟

    اختتمت العملة المشفرة شهر أكتوبر أعلى مستوى 70 ألف دولار لأول مرة منذ مارس
  • نظرة مفصلة على المرشحين الرئاسيين للانتخابات الأمريكية 2024

    نظرة مفصلة على المرشحين الرئاسيين للانتخابات الأمريكية 2024

    الرئيس السابق دونالد ترامب هو المرشح الرئاسي الجمهوري ونائبة الرئيس كامالا هاريس هي المرشحة الديمقراطية.
  • US election: Why is Kamala Harris losing Indian American voters? | US Election 2024 News

    US election: Why is Kamala Harris losing Indian American voters? | US Election 2024 News

    Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is projected to lose a segment of her party’s traditional share of Indian American voters – who have historically sided with the Democrats – in the 2024 United States election, a new survey of the community’s political attitudes has found.

    Even though Harris could become the first ever Indian American president of the US, a survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has found that she is likely to secure fewer votes from the community than incumbent President Joe Biden did in 2020.

    An estimated 61 percent of respondents from the community will vote for Harris, the survey found, down by nearly 4 percent as compared to the last presidential election in 2020.

    The 5.2 million-strong Indian American community is the second-largest immigrant bloc in the US after Mexican Americans, with an estimated 2.6 million voters eligible for casting a ballot for the November 5 election.

    There has been a decline in the community’s attachment to Harris’s party as well, with 47 percent of respondents identifying as Democrats, down from 56 percent in 2020. Meanwhile, the researchers noted “a modest shift in the community’s preferences”, with a slight uptick in willingness to vote for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

    Small but influential

    Both parties have ramped up their outreach to the immigrant group in the last few years as the community continues to grow its political clout and influence. While Harris is today the face of the party, several Indian Americans have gained prominence on the Republican side too – from former presidential contender and ex-ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to entrepreneur-turned-Trump surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy, and vice-presidential nominee JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance.

    Four days before November 5, pollsters say the election is too close to call, with Harris’s national edge over Trump shrinking, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker. And in all seven battleground states – Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada – the two candidates are separated by less than 2 percentage points, within the margin of error for polls.

    The result of the presidential race may come down to a few thousand votes in these crucial swing states, where smaller communities – like Indian Americans – could play a pivotal role, political analysts and observers told Al Jazeera.

    “Even though the Indian American community is not very big in absolute numbers, they can help swing the decision in one direction or another,” said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-author of the paper. “There are many states where the community’s population is larger than the margin of victory in the 2020 presidential election.”

    Indian Americans are the largest Asian American community in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. There are more than 150,000 Indian Americans in both Pennsylvania and Georgia – a number much higher than the margin by which Biden won these two states, with 35 Electoral College votes between them – in 2020.

    But why is the community’s vote drifting away from Democrats?

    Deepening gender divisions

    For Aishwarya Sethi, a 39-year-old Indian American voter based in California, Harris’s pitch to reclaim abortion rights in the country strikes a chord, she told Al Jazeera. But her husband, who works at a tech company in the state, she said, is increasingly tilting towards the Republican base. “I cannot understand why his politics is shifting but it is happening gradually,” she said. “I’ll still try to convince him to vote for greater sexual autonomy.”

    This gender-based partisan divide is reflected in several research papers and leading exit polls across the US. Within the Indian American community, as per the latest survey, 67 percent of women intend to vote for Harris while 53 percent of men, a smaller share, plan to vote for the vice president.

    “Reproductive freedom is a paramount concern for women across America, including South Asian women and the [female] support for Harris is not surprising given her position on abortion rights,” said Arjun Sethi, an Indian American lawyer based in Washington, DC.

    “Whereas a growing number of South Asian men favour strong border policies and a more friendly taxation regime, [therefore] aligning with Trump.”

    A closer look at the data reveals that the gender gap is starkest with younger voters.

    A majority of men and women above the age of 40 say they plan to pick Harris. Among voters below the age of 40, however, the male vote is split almost equally between Harris and Trump, while women overwhelmingly support Harris.

    “There is also a growing scepticism among some Indian American men voting for a female president,” added Vaishnav, co-author of the paper. The deepening gender gap in voting preference among the immigrant community is “a new cleavage that didn’t exist before, however, [it] is in line with the larger national trend in the US”.

    Trump’s tougher stance on “illegal and undocumented immigration and a very aggressive populist, nationalist politics” may find resonance among a segment of Indian American voters, said Sangay Mishra, an associate professor of international relations, with a specialisation in immigrants’ political incorporation, at Drew University.

    “This pitch is primarily aimed at white voters but also trickles down to minorities, especially among men.”

    However, at the same time, Mishra warns against reading too much into the reported shift in the survey. “This paper captures the dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party but it does not necessarily mean greater identification with the Republican Party,” he said, “because within the Indian American community, the Republicans are still associated with the Christian, or white, nationalist position”.

    No takers for Indian heritage?

    Harris’s mother was born in India and migrated to the US in 1958 for graduate studies at the University of California Berkeley, while her father is Black with Jamaican roots. The Democratic candidate has also identified herself as a Black woman in multiple instances.

    That identification with African American roots, rather than more openly embracing her Indian background, has also pushed away a few voters in the South Asian community, said Rohit Chopra, a professor of communication at Santa Clara University. “There is actually more enthusiasm for someone like Tulsi Gabbard or Usha Vance, than for Kamala Harris [in the Indian American community],” he said. “In the American mainstream, Harris is perceived as African American.”

    This “strategic decision” by her campaign is also driven by numbers, Chopra added. “The ‘Indianness’ does not have the same trade-off value [like Black voters], it’s strategically not worth it for them.”

    As per the new survey, Indian Americans (61 percent) are less inclined to vote for Harris than Black voters (77 percent), and marginally more so than Hispanic Americans (58 percent). However, Harris’s support is down among Black and Latino voters too, compared to the norm for the Democratic Party.

    Within the Indian American community, Harris’s position as a more liberal leader appeals to 26 percent of voters as compared to 7 percent who say they are enthusiastic about her Indian heritage. Meanwhile, 12 percent of the respondents in the survey said that they are less enthusiastic about the Democratic ticket because “Harris identifies more with her Black roots”.

    The Gaza heat

    There are other worrying signs for Democrats too: The number of Indian Americans who identify themselves as Democrats has dropped to 47 percent in 2024, down by nine points from 56 percent in 2020.

    Meanwhile, 21 percent identify themselves as Republicans – the same as in 2020 – while the percentage of Indian Americans who identify as independents has grown, up to 26 percent from 15 percent.

    One reason for this shift, say experts, is Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 43,000 people have been killed, and President Joe Biden’s administration’s steadfast support for Israel.

    Earlier in the year, more than 700,000 Americans voted “uncommitted” in state primaries as a message to Biden, the then-Democrat nominee, that he would lose significant support on the November 5 election day. As per recent polls, Trump is narrowly leading Harris among Arab Americans with a lead of 45 percent to 43 percent among the key demographic.

    “A large number of young people, particularly young Indian Americans, are disillusioned with the stance that the Democrats have taken on Gaza,” said Mishra of Drew University. “There is a lot of conversation about uncommitted voters, or giving a protest vote, to show that people are unhappy with what’s happening in Gaza – and that is influencing at least a section of Indian Americans.”

    Sethi, the Indian American lawyer based in DC, added that he is confident that “a growing number of younger South Asians are voting for a third-party candidate because they are deeply committed to ending the genocide in Gaza, and therefore refuse to vote for either Trump or Harris”.

    ‘Domestic issues over foreign policy’

    Multiple immigration experts and political analysts have said that a slight shift among the Indian American community towards Trump is also driven by his apparent friendship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist leader.

    In a message on Diwali, the Indian festival of light on Thursday, Trump tried to woo the Hindu American vote.

    “I strongly condemn the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh, which remains in a total state of chaos,” he said on X. “It would have never happened on my watch. Kamala and Joe have ignored Hindus across the world and in America.”

    “We will also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left. We will fight for your freedom. Under my administration, we will also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Prime Minister Modi.”

    However, Vaishnav, the co-author of the paper, claimed that it is a rather “common misperception that Indian Americans tend to vote in the presidential elections based on their assessment of US-India ties”.

    Vaishnav added that the last two surveys, in 2020 and 2024, on the political attitude of the community reveal that “foreign policy may be important to Indian Americans, but it is not a defining election issue” because of a bipartisan consensus that the US and India should grow together.

    Instead, the voters are more motivated by daily concerns like prices, jobs, healthcare, climate change and reproductive rights, Vaishnav said.

  • The final day of voting in the US is here

    The final day of voting in the US is here

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Election Day 2024 arrived Tuesday — with tens of millions of Americans having already cast their ballots. Those include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

    The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.

    As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.

    Despite long lines in some places and a few hiccups that are common to all elections, early in-person and mail voting proceeded without any major problems.

    That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads.

    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. As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger at 59% of registered voters, state election board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said.

    Brinson Bell called the voters and election workers in the hurricane-hit counties “an inspiration to us all.”

    Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible.

    The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day.

    He has mischaracterized an investigation underway in Pennsylvania into roughly 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications by saying one of the counties was “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person.” The investigation is into registration applications; there is no indication that ballots are involved.

    In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mailed ballots to their local election office by the close of polls on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge rejected their lawsuit over the weekend.

    Trump and Republicans also have warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that runs counter to the data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote is rare. Any noncitizen who does faces the potential of felony charges and deportation, a significant disincentive.

    The 2024 election is here. This is what to know:

    News outlets around the world count on the AP for accurate U.S. election results. Since 1848, the AP has been calling races up and down the ballot. Support us. Donate to the AP.

    One case of noncitizen voting was caught during early voting last month and resulted in felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early ballot.

    This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”

    Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden’s win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.

    Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements.

    On the last weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was being rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all the ballots are counted.

    Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on elections. The Democratic nominee told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Instead, she urged people who had already cast ballots to encourage their friends to do the same.

    Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass.

    While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states.

    On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast.

    Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections.

    “This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

  • Americans head to polls with historic election on a knife edge | US elections 2024

    Election day has arrived in America, with tens of millions of voters set to head to the polls on Tuesday in one of the closest and most consequential contests in modern US history.

    The Democrat Kamala Harris and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, appear locked in a knife-edge contest with hardly any daylight between the pair in national opinion polls that have barely budged in weeks.

    In the seven crucial swing states – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina – the picture was the same. Recent polling has been unable to discern a clear pattern or advantage for either Harris or Trump in this electoral battleground, though most experts agree that whoever wins the Rust belt state of Pennsylvania is likely to have a clear advantage.

    “If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump, 78, said at a rally in Reading, in the state’s southeast corner, during a frenetic final day of campaigning in the state. Later, in Pittsburgh, he framed the election as a choice between “a golden age of America” if he returns to the White House or “four more years of misery, failure and disaster” under Harris.

    Harris, 60, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania and finished in Philadelphia, where she was joined by singer Lady Gaga and TV personality Oprah Winfrey, who warned of the threat that Trump poses to democracy. “We don’t get to sit this one out,” Winfrey said. “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”

    It is the swing states that will decide the election, because under the complex American political system, the result is decided not by the national popular vote but an electoral college in which each state’s number of electors is weighed roughly by the size of its population. Each candidate needs 270 votes in the electoral college to clinch victory, and the battleground is formed of those states where polls indicate a state could go either way.

    More than 78m early ballots have been cast but the result may not be quickly known. With polling so tight, full results in the crucial swing states are unlikely to be available on Tuesday night and may not even emerge on Wednesday, leaving the US and the wider world on tenterhooks as to who may emerge as America’s next president.

    The election brings to an end a remarkable and in many ways unprecedented election campaign that has deeply divided American society and upped the stress levels of many of its citizens amid warnings of civil unrest, especially in a scenario where Harris wins and Trump contests the result.

    Harris has consistently centered her campaign on the autocratic threat that Trump represents. In her final big signature event, Harris staged a rally of 75,000 supporters on the Ellipse in Washington – the spot where Trump helped encourage his supporters to attack the Capitol on 6 January 2021.

    “On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people,” Harris told the crowd.

    Harris’ campaign has tried to represent a page turning on the Trump era and threat of his return to the White House. She has acknowledged that calling Trump a fascist is a fair reflection of his political beliefs and the intentions of his movement, while insisting that she represents a choice that will serve all sides of America’s deeply fractured political landscape.

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    Trump, meanwhile, has run a campaign fueled by a sense of deep grievance, both personal, at his legal travails, and the perception among many of his supporters of an ailing America that is under threat from the Democrats. That sense of victimhood has been fueled by lies and conspiracy theories that have baselessly painted Biden and Harris as far-left figures who have wrecked the American economy with high inflation and an obsession with identity politics.

    Trump has also put immigration and border security at the heart of his campaign pitch, painting a picture of America as overrun with crime caused by illegal immigration that has often veered into outright racism and fear-mongering. He has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” with “bad genes” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

    The huge divisions between the two campaigns and the language used by candidates – especially Trump and his allies – have led to widespread fears of violence or unrest as voting day plays out and especially as the count goes on. In the run-up to election day, ballot drop boxes used for early voting were destroyed in several US states.

    At the same time, however, it was Trump himself who was the subject of two assassination attempts during the campaign. At a rally in Pennsylvania, an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear and at a golf course in Florida, a gunman lay in wait for an ambush, only to be foiled by an eagle-eyed Secret Service agent before he could open fire. Neither shooter seemed coherently politically motivated or definitively aligned with one side or another.

  • Update on U.S. House Vacancies

    Update on U.S. House Vacancies

    By 270toWin Staff

    July 21, 2024, 12:02 PM ET

    The passing of long-time Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18) on Friday created a new vacancy in the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans now hold a 220-212 partisan advantage.

    Jackson Lee was renominated for a 16th term in the state’s March primary. Replacing her on the November ballot will fall to the Harris County Democratic Party’s executive committee, who has until August 26 to nominate someone. It is up to Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to decide whether there is a special election to complete the current term. 

    A brief update on the other two seats that are currently unfilled:

    NJ-10: Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr. died in April. The seat will be filled in a special election on September 18. Party primaries were held July 16, with businessman Carmen Bucco unopposed for the GOP nomination. For the Democrats, Newark City Council president LaMonica McIver advanced from a large field, and will be heavily favored in this district where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 6 to 1 margin.

    At a party convention this past Thursday, McIver was also selected to be the nominee on the November ballot for a full two-year term. She will replace Payne, who had been posthumously nominated in the June primary.

    WI-08: Republican Mike Gallagher resigned in April. The seat will be filled concurrently with this year’s regular elections. Special primaries are on August 13; the special election is November 5. This is a safely Republican seat; three are vying to succeed Gallagher.

  • ترمب يعد بـ«قيادة الولايات المتحدة والعالم» نحو «قمم مجد جديدة»

    ترمب يعد بـ«قيادة الولايات المتحدة والعالم» نحو «قمم مجد جديدة»

    تعهد المرشح الجمهوري دونالد ترمب اليوم (الثلاثاء) «بقيادة الولايات المتحدة والعالم» نحو «قمم مجد جديدة» في كلمته الختامية في تجمعه الانتخابي الأخير.

    وقال للحشود في غراند رابيدز في ولاية ميشيغان المتأرجحة: «بتصويتكم يمكننا حل كل مشكلة تواجهها بلادنا وقيادة الولايات المتحدة لا بل والعالم نحو قمم مجد جديدة»، حسبما أفادت «وكالة الصحافة الفرنسية».

    وفي حديث ترمب في بيتسبرغ بولاية بنسلفانيا، إحدى الولايات المتأرجحة، دعا إلى فرض عقوبة الإعدام على المهاجرين الذين يقتلون مواطنين أميركيين أو عناصر من الشرطة، وفي خطوة اعتبرت صداماً بين المهاجرين والرياضيين المحترفين.

    وأعرب ترمب عن استيائه مرة أخرى من تدفق المهاجرين عبر الحدود الجنوبية للولايات المتحدة، واقترح أن يتصارع الرياضيون من جامعة ولاية بنسلفانيا معهم. وقال: «هؤلاء الشباب من ولاية بنسلفانيا، أردتهم أن يتصارعوا مع المهاجرين».

    وفي وقت لاحق دعا إلى أشد العقوبات على المهاجرين الذين يقتلون مواطنين أميركيين أو عناصر من الشرطة.

    يذكر أن ترمب (78 عاماً) جعل من تقييد الهجرة غير القانونية إحدى القضايا المحورية في حملته الانتخابية، حيث صور المهاجرين مراراً كأعداء للولايات المتحدة، وأثار مشاعر مناهضة للأجانب بادعاءات زائفة.