The 20204 Election Day is here in Alabama and across the country. 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.
Here are the latest updates:
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.
Trump says ‘I feel very confident’ after casting his ballot“
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.
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.”
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
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.
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
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.
More information and real-time Election 2024 coverage can be found at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
