Election officials in Milwaukee are recounting more than 30,000 absentee ballots because doors on the ballot tabulators were not properly sealed.
The recounting was being done "out of an abundance of caution," said Melissa Howard, spokesperson for the Milwaukee Election Commission.
There was no reason to believe that any ballots already counted had been tampered with, she said. Howard said they were taking the step of recounting all of the ballots in an effort to be "completely, fully transparent." The problem was due to human error, she said.
The decision will delay the reporting of about 105,000 absentee ballots that could determine whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump win Wisconsin.
A small set of polls in Indiana and Kentucky closed at 6 pm EST. Polls in a few Indiana districts across the state and polls on the eastern side of Kentucky are the first to close in the nation. The first large poll closing comes at 7 pm EST. That closure includes most of Florida, all of Georgia and Virginia, among others.
Donald Trump sought to undermine Tuesday the credibility of voting in the biggest city of must-win US state Pennsylvania, an unsupported claim quickly and firmly denied by top Philadelphia officials. Amid reports of exceptionally high voter turnout in a soundly Democratic area, Trump said there was "a lot of talk about massive cheating" in the city.
"Law enforcement coming!!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
A city official promptly denied the claim, calling it "yet another example of disinformation," while Philadelphia police and the district attorney's office also rejected the unsubstantiated allegation.
"There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation," said District Attorney Larry Krasner. "If Donald J. Trump has any facts to support his wild allegations, we want them now," he added.
Trump provided no evidence to support his claim made as Americans voted in a tense election that polls have suggested is effectively tied between Trump and Kamala Harris.
"There is absolutely no truth to this allegation," said City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican. "Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure."
Meanwhile, the state's Fayette County has gone to court to block a local judge of elections from doing a unilateral hand count of ballots in violation of the state’s election code.
Marybeth Kuznik, director of the Fayette County Bureau of Elections, says in a court filing that Washington Township Judge of Election Vincent Manetta "reported that after polls close today, he intends to remove the ballots from the ballot box and audit or hand count the votes cast for each presidential candidate."
Completed ballots are supposed to be run through tabulating equipment. Kuznik asked a judge to order Manetta to comply with state election law. The judge has yet to rule.
A white substance was found on a ballot envelope in Salt Lake County, Utah. The envelope was sequestered, tested and found to not be harmful, according to police. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who oversees elections statewide, commended the county clerk and her employees for acting swiftly to ensure the safety of those in the area.
"This incident will be fully investigated. Anyone attempting to intimidate election workers or disrupt election administration in any way can expect to face criminal charges," Henderson said.
Bomb threats to Georgia voting sites were made over the internet and included Cyrillic letters, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.
That gave election officials a clue about the origins of the threats, he said at an early evening briefing in Atlanta.
"We jumped on it quickly and then the FBI then followed our lead," he said. He said that once the FBI released a statement about the matter earlier Tuesday, the threats "kind of tapered off."
He said of the culprits: "I guess they realized that dog won’t hunt today in Georgia."
The lights on the Manhattan icon will change color every time The Associated Press declares a victor in one of the decisive swing states, according to a post on its official account on X, formerly Twitter.
The 103-floor skyscraper’s tower lights will shine blue for five minutes if Harris claims one of the battlegrounds and shine red for five minutes if Trump wins one.
When one of the candidates reaches the winning threshold of 270 electoral votes, the Art Deco landmark will again be lit up to correspond to the victorious political party: red for Republican Trump or blue for Democrat Harris.
Barring a major surprise, the seven states where the race for the White House will likely be decided are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Two counties in battleground North Carolina will delay turning in their results by 30 minutes after the State Board of Elections agreed to extend the close of voting at two precincts due to technical problems there on Tuesday morning.
The board voted to push the closing time at one precinct in Burke County and another precinct in Wilson County to 8 pm.
According to election officials, likely voters at the Wilson County precinct were unable to cast ballots for almost an hour and a half because a printer needed to generate voter authorization forms wasn’t working. And in Burke County, people couldn’t vote for potentially 30 or 40 minutes when a precinct laptop computer with the official pollbook had a problem.
The state board won’t publish unofficial results from Burke and Wilson counties until voting ends at the precincts. Results in the state’s other 98 counties can be reported at the normal closing time.
Voters arriving at a polling place in Jacksonville, Florida, were diverted to another voting location for a short time Tuesday after a suspicious package was found outside.
Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland said in an email that about 20 voters were sent to other locations for about 40 minutes before operations at the polling place resumed. The package ended up being the personal belongings of a homeless person, he said.
Denver-area authorities look into ballot issues at adult day care facility
Authorities in the Denver area are investigating after election officials discovered "discrepancies" with signatures on several mail ballots sent from an adult day care facility in the city. That’s according to Denver clerk and recorder Paul Lopez in a statement.
Election workers in Colorado check the signatures on mail ballots against voter signatures on file to make sure they’re submitted by the voter the ballot was sent to. Lopez said his office notified law enforcement and the Denver district attorney’s office was investigating. He also said law enforcement in nearby counties were also investigating but did not explain why.
Denver’s KMGH-TV, which first reported the investigation, said ballots from the facility were sent to six counties. Colorado overwhelmingly votes by mail.
In Central Iowa’s Story County, home to about 100,000 people and the city of Ames, voting machines at some precincts malfunctioned, portending possible delays to reporting results.
"We are aware of technical issues regarding tabulators in some precincts in Story County," said Ashley Hunt Esquivel, a spokesperson for Iowa Secretary of State’s Office. "The auditor is working with the vendor and our office to resolve it. It is not stopping anyone from casting a single ballot. It may impact how quickly we can report results."
Story County Auditor Lucy Martin told the Des Moines Register that machines did not read "certain ballot styles" at about 12 of the county’s 45 polling locations. Election workers would have to count ballots at those locations by hand, according to local Democratic and Republican Party officials. The machines were tested and the cause of the technical difficulties was unknown, Martin added.
Ballots sent to some polling locations in St. Clair County, Alabama, for Tuesday’s election were missing a state amendment and a local amendment, local probate judge Andrew Weathington said at a news conference Tuesday.
Judge Weathington said the first round of corrected ballots had been ordered from Birmingham and estimated they would arrive just before 2 pm CT.
"I’m as frustrated as anybody, and I understand that we have to take off work and all that stuff to go vote. And I apologize. I don’t know what else to say other than we’re very, very sorry," Weathington said.
The local circuit court judge ordered polling locations across the country to stay open for two additional hours this evening, until 9 pm to accommodate the error. Weathington said ballots that had already been cast would still be counted. There are just over 95,000 residents in St. Clair County, according to the 2023 U.S. Census.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said in an email that his office is aware of the delays and stressed that his office is not involved in inspecting and printing the ballots.
FBI says bomb threats to several states came from Russian email domains, deemed non-credible The FBI did not identify the states in question, but Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said earlier Tuesday that the state’s election process had snuffed out some bomb threats that he said came from Russia.
Officials in Fulton County, Georgia, said they received "multiple calls" and the threats forced a brief closure of two polling places. The bomb threats were among multiple disturbances that US officials are tracking.
A man was arrested in upstate New York on Tuesday for threatening to burn down a polling site after he was told his registration wasn’t current, police said.
The man went to vote in the town of Fowler near the Canadian border around 6:30 a.m., New York State Police said in a news release.
The man, who had previously been convicted of a felony, was told he was ineligible to vote because he had not re-registered after being released from prison. The man became irate and began threatening to return with a gun or to burn the place down, police said. The man fled but was later picked up by state police and brought to the station for questioning. Charges against him were pending.