Counting has begun after tense polls

Agencies

The countdown has begun in the US after millions of Americans voted yesterday in presidential elections defined by drama and uncertainty; Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are split after months of intense campaigning to await the outcome of an extremely close race.

The outcome, perhaps overnight or within a few days, will either make Harris the first female president in the country’s history or deliver a comeback for Trump that sends shockwaves around the world.

The bitter rivals spent the final day of their campaigns trying to get their supporters to the polls and courting the last remaining undecided voters in swing states who are expected to decide the outcome.

But Democratic Vice President Harris, 60, and Republican former President Trump, 78, were neck and neck in the polls despite the most volatile White House contest in modern times.

Following dizzying developments, from Harris’ dramatic entrance with President Joe Biden’s departure in July to Trump’s evasion of two assassination attempts and his criminal conviction, tens of millions of voters are expected to cast ballots, along with the 83 electors. Millions of people have already voted early.

The first votes yesterday reflected the division across the country. Six registered voters in New Hampshire’s tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch split their votes between Harris and Trump in a vote held just after midnight.

But some officials hoped that changes to vote-counting rules in some key battleground states would speed up the release of results.

Due to the huge size of the USA, voting in Hawaii, one of the last states to vote, started approximately 7 hours after the start of voting in the country. Hawaii, which has four electoral college votes, will be one of the last states to close its polls at 19:00 local time (05:00 GMT) today. Some locations in Alaska will remain open an hour later.

Yesterday, both candidates made their final appeals to voters.

“We vote today because we love our country and believe in the promise of America,” Harris wrote on social media.

Trump released a somber one-minute ad and then shared: “This will be the most important day in American History.”

The Republican candidate cast his vote in Florida. His opponent, Kamala Harris, cast her vote by mail in California.

Wearing his distinctive red beret, Trump told media at the polling station that he was “feeling good.” “I feel very confident … and it looks like the Republicans have flexed their muscles,” he said.

In a radio interview on election day, Harris urged Americans to “get out and vote,” especially in battleground states.

“We’ve got to get this done. It’s voting day and people need to get out and be active,” he said on Atlanta station WVEE-FM.

Harris said she will host the Election Night watch party at her alma mater, Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C.

Long queues formed in the city of Erie, located in the battlefield of Pennsylvania.

“There are many, many more people here than there were last election,” Marchelle Beason, 46, told AFP after voting for Harris at a primary school.

“We’re very divided right now, and he’s for peace. And everything his opponent says is really negative,” he added.

56-year-old Darlene Taylor, who said she was living with disability aid at the same school, noted that her main problem was “closing the border.”

“We don’t need four more years of higher inflation, gas prices (and) lying,” said Taylor, wearing a homemade Trump shirt.

Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania court yesterday approved a local election board’s request to extend voting hours by two hours in a strongly pro-Trump county after voting machines in the key swing state experienced a software error on election day.

At stake on election day is control of Congress and, by extension, the new president’s ability to implement his own agendas. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 of 100 seats in the Senate are up for grabs.

Trump’s campaign has suggested he could declare victory on election night, as he did four years ago, even if millions of votes have not yet been counted. The former president has repeatedly said any defeat could only be due to widespread fraud, repeating his baseless claims from 2020. If the margins in battleground states are as slim as expected, the winner may not be known for days.

In Georgia, there were five uncredible bomb threats at polling places across the state, prompting evacuations in two locations. Later, the Georgian foreign minister told the press that the threats came from Russia.

Meanwhile, the FBI warned Americans about two new fake videos falsely promoting terrorist threats and voter fraud, the latest in a series of disinformation that officials fear will intensify on Election Day.

A fabricated video purporting to be from a federal law enforcement agency falsely cited a high terrorist threat and encouraged Americans to “vote remotely,” while another video purported to be from the agency and a fake press release claiming fraudulent voting among inmates at five prisons Contains .

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that both were “not real.”

Federal, state and local officials are warning Americans about attempts to undermine the election with misinformation and urging U.S. voters to get reliable information from reliable sources.

But the threats caused little disruption to the voting process, as voters voted to vote on who should be the next US president.

No matter who wins, history will be made.

Harris, 60, the first female vice president, would become the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency. The only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, the 78-year-old Trump will also be the first president in more than a century to win non-consecutive terms.

Opinion polls show the candidates running neck-and-neck in each of the seven states that are likely to determine the winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Harris leading by 12 percentage points among women and Trump winning by seven percentage points among men.

If the results are close, the final outcome of the polls may not be known for several days, increasing tensions in a deeply divided country.

There are also fears of unrest and even violence if Trump loses and then contests the outcome, as he did in 2020.

The world is also watching with concern, because the outcome will have major consequences for conflicts in the Middle East, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the fight against climate change, which Trump calls a hoax.

Some experts said Trump’s return to power would immediately fuel international instability, with U.S. allies in Europe and NATO alarmed by Trump’s isolationist “America First” policies.

Trade partners are also watching with concern as he promises to impose sweeping import tariffs.

Trump said he will not seek re-election in 2028.