US Election Day: Harris vs Trump [UPDATE]

23:17

In the US capital, Capitol Police officers arrested a man who smelled of fuel - they found a torch and a flare gun.

23:00

Polls close in four states, including California, Oregon and Washington, representing a likely Democratic landslide.

22:56

In Richmond, Virginia, the election commission removed a precinct chairperson over complaints.

22:50

Kamala Harris visited the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., to thank phone bankers for her campaign.

22:45

Google said it was working to fix a glitch that caused the search results for ‘where can I vote for Harris’ and ‘where can I vote for Trump’ to differ.

22:40

Journalists from several news organisations were denied credentials to attend former President Donald Trump's watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida, in response to their coverage of the Trump campaign. Reporters from Politico, Axios, Puck, Voice of America, and Mother Jones were among those denied credentials. Some, such as Politico, had previously been granted access to the event on Tuesday night only to have the decision reversed. A person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made in response to an article in Politico magazine that reported that Trump's campaign manager had been fired because he was a white nationalist.

22:00

Polls close in three states, including the last battleground state, Nevada.

21:35

FBI claims that bomb threats in several states came from Russian email domains, which is considered implausible.

21:16

Presidential elections are currently underway in all US states, and more than 80 million people have already voted.

21:00

Polls are closing in 15 states, including the battlegrounds of Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. Polls will also be closed in some of the most populous states, such as Texas and New York.

19:30

A man who threatened to burn down a polling station was arrested in New York State, near the Canadian border. The man, who had previously been convicted of a serious crime, was told that he was not eligible to vote because he had not re-registered after being released from prison.

18:40

Fake video of Arizona scam spread by Russian disinformation network linked to ‘troll factory’.

18:10

An Alabama county prints emergency ballots after discovering a missing page. St. Clair County Judge Andrew Waitington said the problem was discovered Tuesday morning when packets of sealed ballots were opened at polling places and many were missing the back page that proposed constitutional amendments and appeared to be a printing error.

17:58

Florida voters who accessed the state's website to check the status of their voter registration received an error message. 

‘We are working to resolve the issue. We are providing voters with alternative websites and locations so they can find voter information, their precinct,’ said spokesman Mark Ard. 

15:32

In Florida, the majority of the state's registered voters have already cast their ballots early, including vote-by-mail and early in-person voting, according to a University of Florida analysis of state data.

15:11

Polling stations will close completely in 6 states starting at 19:00 EST.

13:14

In the first vote on Election Day in Dixville Notch, the presidential vote was tied 3-3. Dixville Notch, a tiny town in New Hampshire, has a tradition since 1960 of being the first in the country to complete in-person voting. The town's six electors began voting at midnight, and the counting was completed 15 minutes later.

12:15

The Associated Press has been counting national, state and local election results since 1848. In general, the process is the same today as it was then: counting reporters collect local election results as soon as the polls close and then submit those results to AP for collation, verification and reporting. This year, AP will be counting votes in approximately 5,000 competitive races across the United States, from presidential and congressional races to state legislative and ballot measures.

08:57

The 2024 US presidential election will take place today, 5 November. Former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump will run against current Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. In July, President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy for the 2024 elections, supporting his Vice President Kamala Harris.

All the Democratic Party delegates previously pledged to Biden were free to vote for whomever they chose at the Democratic National Convention, as the candidate they had pledged during the primary process was no longer running. The vast majority voted for Harris, so she became the presidential candidate.

The US Constitution has three basic requirements for presidential candidates: individuals must be a US citizen by birth, at least 35 years old, and a resident of the country for 14 years. There are some exceptions to the 14-year residency requirement for members of the US armed forces.

Primaries and caucuses are the first step in the process by determining the support of political parties for candidates. They take place at the state level in the early spring of the election year. If a candidate is not running as an independent, he or she will register to run for the political party of the state where he or she lives.

As in regular elections, primaries are held by secret ballot, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Caucuses are more complicated. In states where they are used, a day is set when members of political parties meet to decide together by public vote which candidate they want to represent them. Hundreds of such meetings take place when the state holds its caucuses.

After all the primaries and caucuses at the state level, political parties hold national conventions to formally select the candidate who will represent them in the November elections, as well as his or her running mate.

At the conventions, delegates from each of the 50 US states come together to vote for a presidential candidate. To win, a candidate needs a simple majority of the delegates' votes.

The election of the US president is not determined by a majority vote, but is ultimately decided by the Electoral College, which consists of 538 electors (one elector for each member of the US Congress, plus three from the District of Columbia).

To win an election, a simple majority of at least 270 electoral votes is required.

These votes are allocated based on geography and population. Moreover, each US state is allocated one electoral vote per member of the congressional delegation. This means that regardless of population size, each state automatically has three electoral votes, as all states have two US senators and at least one seat in the House of Representatives.

The number of people who make up a state's congressional delegation depends on its population. California has the most votes with 54, while Vermont, for example, has a minimum of three. Except Maine and Nebraska, which have a form of proportional representation, a candidate wins all the votes in a state if he or she wins a majority there.