Thousands and thousands of People have lined up at polling stations throughout the US to decide on between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris in a historic presidential race that continues to be too near name.
Voting was below means on Tuesday with no main disruptions, as each candidates spent Election Day urging their supporters to forged their ballots, stressing that the stakes couldn’t be increased.
“In the present day we vote for a brighter future,” Harris wrote in a publish on X, linking to a nationwide listing of polling websites.
In the present day, we vote for a brighter future.
Polling areas throughout the nation are open. Discover yours at https://t.co/VbrfuqVy9P. pic.twitter.com/7pJzch0XJR
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 5, 2024
Harris spent a part of the day calling radio stations in an effort to encourage her supporters to vote. “We’ve obtained to get it performed. In the present day is voting day, and folks must get out and be lively,” CNN quoted Harris as telling one radio station in Georgia.
Trump, on his X account, advised voters: “I want you to ship your vote regardless of how lengthy it takes”, slamming his opponents as “radical communist Democrats”.
He addressed the media after casting his poll in Palm Seashore, Florida, saying he felt “very assured” about his election odds.
“It appears like Republicans have proven up in pressure,” Trump mentioned. “We’ll see the way it seems.”
He added: “I hear we’re doing very properly.”
A race churned by unprecedented occasions – two assassination makes an attempt towards Trump, President Joe Biden’s shock withdrawal and Harris’s fast rise – remained neck and neck, even after billions of {dollars} in spending and months of frenetic campaigning.
Greater than 80 million People had already taken benefit of early voting choices earlier than Tuesday, both by way of mail or in individual, and contours at a number of polling stations on Tuesday had been quick and orderly.
Some glitches of vote-counting expertise had been reported in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and an area courtroom granted a request by election officers to increase voting hours by two hours on Tuesday evening.
A number of states have taken additional safety measures to guard voting locations.
In Georgia, election employees have been outfitted with panic buttons to alert officers to doable safety threats and violence.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, the heated scene of voter fraud allegations within the 2020 election, the voter tabulation centre now appears like a fortress behind fencing, concrete boundaries and safety cameras and with drones and police snipers.
However there have been few incidents reported on Tuesday. Two polling areas in Fulton County, Georgia had been briefly evacuated after false bomb threats.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mentioned it was “conscious of bomb threats to polling areas in a number of states”.
Many seem to originate from “Russian electronic mail domains”, it mentioned in a publish on X, including that not one of the threats have been decided to be credible.
Stephanie Jackson Ali, coverage director on the New Georgia Venture, advised Al Jazeera that threats made towards polling locations in Georgia should not a hazard.
“The [Georgia] secretary of state’s workplace believes that they’re from a Russian influencing troll farm, principally, so not something that’s credible or native”, she mentioned.
These threats had been towards polling locations in closely Black-populated areas, she mentioned, together with Democratic-voting Fulton County, the place Atlanta is positioned.
“This signifies that the facility of the Black vote in Georgia is substantial, the facility of the rising citizens is substantial.”
The “rising citizens” she mentioned, contains Black voters, new voters, LGBTQ voters and Latino voters, who reside in Atlanta in increased percentages than they do in the remainder of the principally conservative rural areas of the state.
‘The American dream’
In Dearborn, Michigan, Nakita Hogue, 50, was joined by her 18-year-old faculty scholar daughter, Niemah Hogue, to vote for Harris. Niemah mentioned she takes contraception to assist regulate her interval, whereas her mom recalled needing surgical procedure after she had a miscarriage in her 20s, and each feared efforts by Republican lawmakers to limit girls’s healthcare.
“For my daughter, who’s going out into the world and making her personal means, I need her to have that alternative,” Nakita Hogue mentioned. “She ought to be capable to make her personal choices.”
At a library in Phoenix, Arizona, Felicia Navajo, 34, and her husband Jesse Miranda, 52, arrived with one in all their three younger kids to vote for Trump.
Miranda, a union plumber, immigrated to the US from Mexico when he was 4 years outdated, and mentioned he believed Trump would do a greater job of combating inflation and controlling immigration.
“I need to see good individuals come to this city, individuals which can be prepared to work, people who find themselves prepared to only reside the American dream,” Miranda mentioned.
Trump’s marketing campaign has recommended he could declare victory on election evening even whereas hundreds of thousands of ballots have but to be counted, as he did 4 years in the past.
The previous president has repeatedly mentioned any defeat might solely stem from widespread fraud, echoing his false claims from 2020. The winner is probably not identified for days if the margins in battleground states are as slim as anticipated.
Regardless of who wins, historical past will probably be made.
Harris, 60, the primary feminine vice chairman, would turn into the primary lady, Black lady and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the one president to be impeached twice and the primary former president to be criminally convicted, would additionally turn into the primary president to win non-consecutive phrases in additional than a century.
Opinion polls present the candidates working neck and neck in every of the seven swing states prone to decide the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Reuters/Ipsos polling exhibits Harris main amongst girls by 12 share factors and Trump successful amongst males by seven share factors.
