The presidential campaign comes down to a final push across a handful of states on the eve of Election Day.
Kamala Harris will spend all of Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. Donald Trump plans four rallies in three states, beginning in Raleigh, North Carolina and stopping twice in Pennsylvania with events in Reading and Pittsburgh, then ending in Michigan
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Harris touted her “longstanding commitment” to Puerto Rico at an event in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Monday, contrasting herself with Trump and his recent rally that featured a comedian calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
“I stand here proud of my longstanding commitment to Puerto Rico and her people and I will be a president for all Americans,” Harris said to sizable applause, repeating “all Americans” for emphasis.
Harris’ campaign is looking to use that comment to win over voters in Pennsylvania and nationwide. Fat Joe, a rapper of Puerto Rican heritage, spoke shortly before Harris.
“Momentum is on our side,” Harris said. “Can you feel it? We have momentum.”
A federal judge will hear a legal motion Tuesday by Republican Party attorneys who argue that several Georgia counties wrongly allowed voters to hand-deliver mail-in ballots over the weekend and Monday.
A similar court challenge was shot down over the weekend by a state judge in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta. Now the Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party are suing election boards in Fulton and six other heavily Democratic counties in U.S. District Court in Savannah.
GOP attorneys argue that counties should have stopped taking absentee ballots dropped off in-person once early voting ended Friday.
They want U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker to order those counties to keep absentee ballots delivered by hand Saturday through Monday separate from others so they can be preserved as evidence in further litigation. The Republicans’ legal motion does not ask the judge to stop those ballots from being counted.
It has long been the practice for Georgia election offices to accept mail ballots over the counter. State law says voters can deliver their absentee ballots in person to county election offices until polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Wintry weather is forecast for Election Day in parts of Alaska, with blizzard conditions in the southwest and a winter storm warning that could bring more than a foot (30 centimeters) of snowfall in parts of south-central Alaska.
The blizzard warning issued by the National Weather Service until early Tuesday afternoon includes rural villages in the Kuskokwim Delta, with snowfall totals of up to 9 inches (23 centimeters) along the coast and wind gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) possible.
“Yo soy boricua, pa’que tu lo sepas!” Rapper Fat Joe started his speech in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with a chant referencing the popular Puerto Rican mantra. In English: “I am Puerto Rican, so that you know!”
“They said they needed a Puerto Rican in Allentown and boy, I was more than honored to come out here and talk to my people,” he said, addressing Harris as “the next president of the United States of America.”
His speech focused on Latinos, referencing comments Trump made about Mexicans and Haitians in the past, and criticizing his response to Hurricane Maria in 2017.
“The other day at Madison Square Garden, that was no joke, ladies and gentlemen. That was no joke,” he said. “Calling Puerto Rico the island of garbage, my Latinos, where is your pride?”
Fat Joe was referencing Tony Hinchcliffe, a comic who called Puerto Rico “garbage” before a packed Trump rally in New York.
The effects of Hinchcliffe’s remarks are felt on the island and elsewhere: One of the biggest artists on the planet, the Grammy-award winning Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, threw his support behind Harris shortly afterward.
Students on some college campuses in Florida had to wait upwards of two hours to vote early over the weekend, raising concerns among some advocates that the delays could depress turnout among young voters, a bloc that historically favors Democrats but turns out to vote at much lower rates than older Americans.
At times on Sunday, long lines were reported at early vote sites at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and at a Broward College campus in Pembroke Pines, 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Fort Lauderdale.
Christopher Heath, chief elections administrator for the Orange County Supervisor of Elections Office, which includes Orlando, said the long lines on campus were because many college students hadn’t updated their addresses before coming to vote.
Heath said elections staff encouraged voters to update their information online while they waited, but for those that didn’t, clerks had to spend about 20 minutes per voter making the changes.
“At a certain point, you are going to get a lot of people trying to vote all at the same time and lines are going to be long,” Heath said
For months, progressive groups have been organizing voter outreach campaigns on college campuses. Advocates hope two constitutional amendments that would expand abortion rights and legalize recreational marijuana in Florida will galvanize young people — and that young voters will help push the measures over the 60% threshold needed to pass.
Vice President Kamala Harris urged the overflow audience at her second event on Monday in Pennsylvania to “remind people the power they have” as they encourage their friends and family to vote.
Harris’ event at Muhlenberg College Memorial Hall in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was filled, so the Democratic nominee addressed additional supporters in a nearby venue, thanking them for coming to the event and touting the difference they can make by voting.
“We are fighting to live forward,” Harris said. “We are all in this together.”
Allentown, once known for its steel industry, has become a majority-minority community with more than half of the city identifying as Hispanic, many with ties to Puerto Rico. A comedian at a Trump rally recently called it a “floating island of garbage.”
In the lead-up to Election Day, the governors of Nevada and Washington state have activated some of their National Guard members to be on standby in the event they are asked to support local law enforcement.
Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo announced Oct. 28 that 60 National Guard members will be stationed in National Guard facilities in Las Vegas and the state capital Carson City on Election Day. They will be available to help with things such as building security and traffic enforcement, his office said in a statement.
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee has also activated some National Guard members to be on standby.
In a Friday news release, he said the order was a precautionary measure taken in response to incidents in October in which incendiary devices set fires at ballot drop boxes in Vancouver, Washington. One of the incidents occurred just a week before Election Day and damaged hundreds of ballots, forcing elections officials to scramble to identify the voters affected and issue replacement ballots.
Inslee’s order activates as many National Guard members as determined necessary for up to four days, beginning Monday and ending at 12:01 a.m. Friday, Nov. 8.
Washington D.C. police are increasing patrols in areas downtown and near the White House around Election Day, though officials say there are no known credible threats to the nation’s capital.
D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith told reporters Monday that the increased patrols are a “preventative measure.” Police will also be using a helicopter and drones to monitor areas downtown, she said. Police will be working out of a new command center to coordinate other agencies and respond to events from election week through the inauguration in January.
Four years after a mob of Donald Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, D.C. officials say they welcome peaceful protests but will have no tolerance for violence.
“We will hold all offenders accountable,” Smith said. ”We will not tolerate the destruction of property, and we will not tolerate threats to public safety as well as this election process.”
Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico even though his family is Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that’s why he’ll vote for Trump tomorrow.
“Grow a pair. Boohoo, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. I will never cry over Puerto Rico being called garbage,” he said at the arena entrance, near a man wearing an orange Trump mask. He acknowledged that the comments weren’t funny, but he said Trump didn’t need to apologize because he didn’t say it at his rally.
Feliciano said that even if candidates insulted Latinos using a racial epithet, he’d be OK if they address the pressing issues for Americans.
“Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.
But they say they’re confident it won’t be possible for foreign adversaries or anyone else to alter the results of the election in any meaningful way.
Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters Monday that state governments have already encountered disruptions such as the criminal destruction of ballot drop boxes and cyberattacks that have taken websites temporarily offline.
She said that while assorted problems may continue Tuesday and in the following days, built-in safeguards make it all but impossible to hack voting systems or cause other disruptions that could affect the results of the election.
Easterly said, “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”
Besides physical concerns, officials are also attuned to what they say is an “unprecedented” level of disinformation about the election from Russia and other countries, and are working to call out false claims.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told an audience in Wisconsin on Monday that if he and Vice President Kamala Harris defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, voters “aren’t ever going to have to see this guy on TV again and listen to him.”
The prediction, which led to roars from the audience of supporters in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, hints at an open question around the 2024 campaign: If Trump loses a second presidential bid in a row, what happens to his political movement and does he run again? Democrats are eager to cast the 2024 campaign as the final battle with Trump after three straight elections with the Republican as their general election competition.
“Just tell yourself how great it is going to be. We get this thing done. … We will win, and when that thing is done, we aren’t ever going to have to see this guy on TV again and listen to him,” Walz said, referring to Trump.
Trump’s campaign has handed out pink signs that say “Women for Trump” to members of the audience seated in the rows of bleachers behind him at his rally in Reading, Pennsylvania.
His rallies lately have had more women seated behind him and appearing on camera wearing pink “Make America Great Again” hats. The former president has faced a gender gap in the race and had been aggressively courting men as part of his strategy.
Trump’s crowd in Reading, Pennsylvania responded with a roaring “No!” as Trump opened his second rally of the day by asking the crowd whether they are better off now than four years ago.
He called the 2024 presidential election “the most important political event in the history of our country.”
The former president, who has refused to acknowledge he lost the presidential election four years ago, said of Tuesday’s election: “I’ve been waiting four years for this.”
“One day. You’ve got to show up,” he added. He also told his supporters they need to show up in droves and “just swamp them tomorrow.”
He said that if he wins Pennsylvania, “we win the whole ball of wax.”
Football is important to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. But even he can’t put the National Football League trade deadline over Election Day.
Tuesday is both, the last day NFL teams can make trades and the day the country picks their next president, something that was not lost on Walz, Democrats' vice presidential nominee, as he spoke in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, on Monday.
“Tomorrow is an important day,” he said. “No, not NFL trade deadline. … It is that and we probably need a little help.”
Walz, a Minnesota Vikings fan, was speaking a short 90-minute drive west of Lambeau Field, the home of the Green Bay Packers, the Vikings’ rivals.
Farage has long been a Trump ally and is the leader of the right-wing party Reform U.K.
It was not clear if Farage planned to speak during Trump’s remarks in Reading, Pennsylvania, but he was seen in the audience before Trump took the stage.
Harris campaign attorney Dana Remus says that efforts by Republican Donald Trump to sow fraud and discord will not work. She says the volume of cases brought by Republicans so far does not mean their claims are legitimate or that there is fraud.
“They know they can’t win at the ballot box because their candidate can’t earn the votes,” Remus said on Monday, so Trump and his allies are instead trying to sow doubt.
She added that the election systems nationwide are stronger than ever.
Trump has drawn thousands of supporters to Santander Arena, but once again, many of the venue’s 7,200 seats remain unfilled more than an hour after he was scheduled to take the stage.
The campaign has hung a large American flag near the back of the arena, blocking view of the back sections, behind the press riser, which are empty.
A 24-year-old man was arrested after punching an election judge at a polling place in Orland Park, Illinois, southwest of Chicago.
The man on Sunday walked past people waiting in line to enter the voting area at about 11 a.m. at the township office, Orland Park police said Monday in a news release.
An election judge posted at the entrance told him to go to the back of the line and wait his turn. After the man refused, he tried to push past a second election judge and was prevented from entering, police said.
The man yelled profanities and hit at least one of the election judges, police added.
When officers arrived, he was being being restrained by several other people.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved two counts of aggravated battery to a victim over 60, two counts of aggravated battery in a public place — both felonies — and misdemeanor resisting arrest and disorderly conduct against the man. He was jailed overnight.
Campaign communications director Michael Tyler told reporters Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris was going to “end this campaign the way she started it: speaking directly to the voters that are going to decide this election.”
Tyler said Harris would do radio interviews in all seven battleground states to make sure “that those final voters who are on their way to work, on their way home, taking a lunch break, understand the stakes” of the election and where Harris intends to take the country if elected.
According to the Republican National Committee, the elections commission announced over the weekend that certain precincts will be limited to only one Republican and one Democratic poll watcher on Election Day.
The commission hasn't disclosed which precincts will be affected, according to the RNC.
The lawsuit seeks an emergency injunction prohibiting the commission from implementing or enforcing any arbitrary restrictions on the number of observers. The commission denied in a statement that observers will be arbitrarily limited but said they are subject to “reasonable limitations” under state law.
Republican observers will be allowed on Election Day, the commission added.
“Let’s get out the vote,” Vice President Kamala Harris chanted at her first event of the day in Pennsylvania, the Democratic nominee throwing her first in the air as she tried to fire up people about to knock on doors for her.
Harris spoke to her supporters at a get-out-the-vote event in Scranton, a key area in Pennsylvania that could go a long way to deciding whether she or former President Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania this year.
Polls have the state tied headed into Election Day.
“All right, let’s get to work — 24 hours to go,” Harris said.
Harris, on the precipice of an Election Day featuring her name atop a major party’s presidential ticket, recalled the more humble kind of campaigning that started her political career.
“When I first ran for office as DA, I started out at 6% in the polls, so anyone who knows that is six out of 100. No one thought I could win. And I used to campaign with my ironing board,” she told supporters at an event in Scranton on Monday.
“I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” Harris added, recalling how she would tape posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out of the grocery store.”
“That is how I love to campaign. I don’t do it as much anymore, obviously,” Harris said, sounding wistful.
Harris was elected as District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003.
Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off election eve with a get-out-the-vote event in Scranton, Pennsylvania, urging supporters who were about to knock on doors for her to “enjoy” the final 24 hours of her campaign.
“Are you ready to do this?” Harris yelled Monday, with a large handmade “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” sign behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner to her side.
Tables near the vice president were full of campaign literature, including door hangers that will be left on doors across the Scranton area. She urged supporters to understand “there’s a huge difference between me and the other guy,” referring to Trump.
Harris’ final day of campaigning will be about one state — Pennsylvania — with the Democratic nominee covering the commonwealth over four events. Polls have the candidates tied heading into Election Day.
“Over these next 24 hours, let’s enjoy this moment to knock on a neighbor’s door,” she said.
Trump appeared Monday on the podcast hosted by former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and sportscaster Jim Gray in which he said he feels “great” about the election and said he’s going up against “a system” with the Democratic Party.
“It’s a system. It’s just the way it is. And it’s very interesting to watch,” Trump said. “Let’s see if I can take down that system. I did it once, very successfully.”
The former president also noted how many rallies he’s doing in the final days, with three or four daily.
“It’s been an amazing experience for me,” he said. “I think we’re doing really well.”
Standing in line for Kamala Harris’ rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat who will vote for just the second time in his life.
Kessler, 54, said he switched parties after he began identifying with the Democrats’ support of gay marriage and abortion rights and sees Donald Trump as lacking integrity, wielding hateful speech and posing a threat to democracy.
For a long time, he didn’t vote, thinking the country “would vote for the correct candidate. And now that I’m older and much more wiser, I believe it’s important, it’s my civic duty and it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country which I supported for 22 years of my life."
Kessler voted for the first time in 2020 — for Biden.
At a pre-election briefing for reporters, Secretary of State Steve Simon said his wish for Election Day is for “high turnout and low drama.”
Minnesota often leads the nation in turnout, he noted, but Maine was No. 1 in 2022. He said Minnesota’s challenge in getting back to No. 1 is that other states have also upped their game.
“By the time Minnesotans are eating breakfast (on Wednesday), they should know all or substantially all of the results in Minnesota,” he said.
He noted that the counting will take longer in several other states because of different procedures, including some presidential battleground states.
Simon’s security chief, Bill Ekblad, said that despite warnings from federal agencies about efforts by “foreign and domestic bad actors” to disrupt the U.S. elections, “we are not currently aware of any, specific credible threats to Minnesota elections.”
Former President Donald Trump says with the growing popularity of gambling in U.S. professional sports that corruption is something that can’t be avoided.
“Well, there will be corruption and the only question is, will it be massive corruption or will it be, you know, regular standard corruption,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with former NFL coach Bill Belichick and veteran broadcaster Jim Gray that aired Monday.
Trump added, “But there’s going to be corruption, and we’ll see how it works out.”
Trump’s campaign has been putting great effort into trying to get lower-propensity voters to turn up for him at the polls. The appearance on the podcast was just the latest effort to reach young male voters Trump hopes will be difference-makers for him.
Trump also made clear that he’s not a fan of a change in rules that allow college athletes to be compensated through brand deals and de facto salaries through donor-funded collectives.
Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe told reporters during a teleconference Monday that she anticipates the large number of absentee ballots local clerks have received will likely lead to delays in tallying.
Wisconsin law prohibits clerks from counting absentee ballots before Election Day. As of Monday morning, local clerks have recorded more than 1.5 million returned absentee ballots, including nearly 950,000 absentee ballots voters cast in-person in clerks’ offices and other locations.
Wolfe added that election officials have been working for the last four years to head off claims of late-night ballot dumps, explaining clerks know exactly how many absentee ballots have been requested and returned.
It’s the first presidential election since Michigan in 2022 added days of early voting to the calendar.
“Some (were) waiting in line for up to an hour,” said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who noted that more than 189,000 people voted Sunday. Voters have cast ballots either in person or with an absentee ballot.
The presidential campaign is coming to a close.
As with previous elections, the candidates have largely stuck to the swing states they’ll need to try to reach the 270 electoral votes required to claim the presidency. The U.S.’s unique Electoral College method of electing the president forces the candidates to appeal to voters in the states that could go either way, rather than trying to win the nation’s popular vote.
Seven states are considered in play this year, representing less than 20% of the U.S. population. Of those, the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets have focused most on Pennsylvania, the swing state with the greatest number of electoral votes.
Going back to March, when President Joe Biden was the presumed Democratic nominee, here are the number of visits the campaigns have made to those seven states through Monday, according to Associated Press tracking of the campaigns’ public events:
▶ For a detailed look at all campaign visits by the presidential tickets, see the AP’s interactive map
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ratcheted up the pressure on the next 24 hours at his first event of election eve Monday, arguing that keeping former President Donald Trump out of the White House would have implications far beyond the next four years.
“The thing is upon us now, folks,” Walz said at a rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin. “I know there is a lot of anxiety, but the decisions that are made over the next 24-36 hours when those polls close, will shape not just the next four years, they will shape the coming generations.”
Walz was joined at his event by his wife, Gwen, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Election officials in Oklahoma say power was restored Monday to some polling locations that lost electricity after a second round of storms battered the state with high winds and heavy rain.
There were no reports of damage to polling locations after a series of storms, including tornadoes, rolled through Oklahoma on Sunday and State Election Board spokesperson Misha Mohr said election officials had been in contract with power companies to prepare for any unforeseen problems that might occur.
Mohr said each of Oklahoma’s 77 county election boards also have backup polling places in case of power outages or damage from severe weather.
German Vega was at New York’s Madison Square Garden when stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during a Trump rally.
“It was absurd,” said Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading, Pennsylvania, and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”
Vega, who describes himself as “pro-life,” voted for Trump in 2020 and he plans to vote for him again tomorrow. He couldn’t attend the Trump rally in Reading because he had to work, but he said his 18-year-old son, who’s still undecided, planned to be at the rally in the mostly Latino city.
The comments at the New York Trump rally also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people. But Vega said he sees them as part of a strategy to court votes.
“It didn’t surprise me,” he said. “From both sides, but especially from the Republicans, there’s been a lot of racism to get the white vote.”
North Carolina’s elections chief says voter participation so far in the western counties harmed by Hurricane Helene’s historic flooding continues to outpace turnout statewide.
State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said in a news conference Monday that 59% of registered voters from the 25 counties affected by the storm have cast ballots through traditional absentee voting or at early in-person voting sites that closed Saturday afternoon.
That compares to the 57% turnout — or 4.45 million ballots cast — so far statewide, according to board data.
“That’s just a testament to the dedication and the extraordinary effort by the election officials, by our partners at the state, local and federal levels to make sure that even when devastation struck, that that did not stop voting,” Brinson Bell said.
More than 2,650 polling places will be open on Election Day. Brinson Bell said seven sites in four counties among the hardest hit by Helene are temporary tents that were acquired with help from emergency officials. She says there’s road access to every one of those sites.
That’s two weeks after a comedian who spoke at a Trump rally in New York referred to it as a “floating island of garbage.”
“I mean Puerto Rico is great,” Trump said Monday at a rally in North Carolina on the last full day of campaigning.
“We helped Puerto Rico more than anybody,” he told his Raleigh audience.
Commedian Tony Hinchcliffe, among the speakers at the Madison Square Garden rally, known for his podcast “Kill Tony,” said: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”
Puerto Ricans cannot vote in the U.S. election, but there are more people of Puerto Rican descent in the United States who can than are of voting age who populate the island. In the battleground states, Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County is home to the state’s largest population of Puerto Rican voters.
In September 2020, after criticism for a slow response to Hurricane Maria in 2017, Trump released $13 billion in assistance to repair years-old hurricane damage. It took Trump two weeks to visit the island after the storm and he was criticized for an appearance where he threw rolls of paper towels into a crowd.
Kamala Harris supporters are banding together on Election Day for what they’re claiming will be the largest phone bank operation of all time.
Participants will include celebrities such as John Legend, Jessica Alba, and Bradley Whitford, as well as politicians including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is also participating in the initiative, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET. “Let’s work together to make important calls to swing states and get out the vote!” he posted on social media.
Supporters get ready before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak to a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Supporters get ready before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak to a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Supporters arrive before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak to a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Atrium Health Amphitheater, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in Macon, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Jenison Field House on the campus of Michigan State University, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in East Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
