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      Tuesday briefing: Hour by hour, what to expect as the results roll in

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      Good morning. This time tomorrow, we may know who’s going to be the next president of the United States. Or we may know that we don’t yet know. Or we may know who’s projected to win, but be bracing ourselves for weeks of enervating legal action and protest. It’s going to be that sort of night, I’m afraid.There’s been a bit of a sense in the last few days that momentum has been shifting towards Kamala Harris, but most respected polling dorks are treating that narrative with the same caution they viewed the one before that, which suggested a rush towards Donald Trump. The smart way to approach it is to remember that there is literally no need to make a prediction because we will have actual numbers very soon, and then get into a flotation tank and stick on some Sigur Rós.Today’s newsletter is your cut-out-and-keep guide to the night. If you were shockingly thinking of sleeping through it, we’ll be with you first thing tomorrow with the very latest – and it is eminently possible we won’t be bringing you decisive news. Whatever happens, if you’d like to help the Guardian keep covering US politics and everything else without fear or favour, please consider supporting us. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

      Education | University tuition fees in England are to go up for the first time in eight years, taking annual payments up to a record £9,535 per student, the government has announced. The inflation-linked rise, amid warnings of a deepening financial crisis in the sector, was coupled with an increase in student maintenance loans.

      Conservatives | Kemi Badenoch has appointed Robert Jenrick shadow justice secretary, with Mel Stride shadow chancellor and Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary, as she began to put together a frontbench team. But there were questions over whether Jenrick, who lost to Badenoch in the leadership contest, had initially sought another post.

      Brazil | Federal police in Brazil have formally charged the alleged mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, accusing him of arming and funding the criminal group responsible for the crime.

      Social care | Care workers from countries such as India, Nigeria and the Philippines who faced losing their immigration status in the UK if they left their employers have been promised new protections under the migrant care workers charter.

      UK news | A teenager has been remanded in custody after he appeared in court charged with attempting to murder a 13-year-old girl and possessing a samurai sword. The 14-year-old was arrested after a girl was found with life-threatening injuries near Hull on Friday morning.
      In depth: What will happen, when and whereView image in fullscreenIf you’re only really tuning in to the detail today, David Smith’s Q&A is a great place to get up to speed. An obligatory reminder of the basics: whether Trump or Harris is the next president will be decided by the electoral college rather than a straight count of the public vote – meaning that the winner will be the person who gets to a majority of 270 of the 538 electors on offer across the 50 states, whether or not they get more votes than their opponent nationwide. Here’s a more detailed explainer on how it works.That means the result is quite likely to come down to who prevails in the seven battleground states identified by both sides as being up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, as are 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate. There are also 13 state and territorial governorships to be decided.If you’re based in the US, interested enough to be reading this and still not sure how to watch it on TV, you may be beyond help, to be honest. In the UK, it will be covered across the BBC (including radio), ITV, Channel 4, Sky News and various others. You can get CNN’s US coverage by signing up on its website; it’s also available on Sky. Mark Brown has more information on the broadcasts here – and the Guardian live blog will also be running, obviously.Here’s a guide to how the night will unfold. UK residents determined to stick around to the bitter end, whenever that might be, should consider getting some sleep at 8pm or 9pm, and setting alarms (let’s say … six? At three minute intervals) for midnight or 1am, since not much will happen before that anyway. But pace yourself. For all that we talk about election night, any of the key races – or several of them – could take well into the next day, or longer, to produce a clear result.10pm UK/5pm Eastern Time | Exit polls give contextVoting ends in Indiana and most of Kentucky, but neither is in play. Meanwhile, the first batch of exit polls are released. Unlike in the UK, where exit polls are usually a decent guide to the final outcome, the American version offers only a tantalising hint of what may be in store. Rather than providing a projection of final results on the basis of asking people at polling stations how they voted, they ask respondents about the issues that matter to them most.They’re based on a bigger sample than typical polls – numbering in the tens of thousands – so they ought to give pretty robust findings. But knowing that voters were motivated by the economy or abortion, for example, will only be a clue to how the night might go, rather than a basis for projecting the result.Midnight UK/7pm ET | Georgia and North CarolinaPolls close in nine states over the next hour. Don’t just follow the running count of electoral college votes to get a sense of how it’s going, though: Trump is expected to have the biggest tally coming out of this first batch however well his night’s going, because five of the nine are firmly in his column, and represent more electoral college votes. Harris’s biggest, safest states like New York and California come later.But polls also close in the first states that could give a major indication of what’s happening: Georgia and North Carolina. Just as importantly, we may start to see whether any clear pattern is emerging that holds true across different states, and therefore provides evidence of what could happen elsewhere.Confusingly, the fact that the result is uncertain that doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to be close. By the end of this hour, if there has been a major polling error in either direction, we could have a sense of it. If it’s a surprise blowout for either candidate, we’ll know pretty quickly. Even a “normal” polling error of two or three points produced consistently across the country would mean a decisive result, and the first signs of that around now. But it’s also possible everything will still be on the line for a long time yet.We don’t know when any of the states will be called, and the results in Georgia and North Carolina may not be known for hours – or, and let’s hope not, days – yet. It’s possible that broadcasters and the Associated Press (AP) will start to call states that haven’t finished counting around now if they conclude that the other side has no chance of catching up, but the closer the race, the longer it may take.(When we talk about states being “called”, we mean that major news organisations have examined the data and reached a conclusion that they feel it is statistically impossible for the other side to win. Official declarations can take much longer.)1am UK/8pm ET | Oh God, it’s PennsylvaniaPolls close in about half the country – so any nationwide patterns should be becoming clear. But it’s Pennsylvania that matters most. With more electoral votes – 19 – than any other swing state, and polls suggesting that it’s the closest race in the country, this is a huge moment. (This dispatch from Joan E Greve and Sam Levine gives you a flavour of how tense things have been.) If Trump wins, tell your friends that it was madness for Harris not to pick the state’s popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate; if Harris wins, you can muse that the insults hurled towards the state’s 470,000 Puerto Ricans at a recent Trump rally might have made the difference.Again, the polls closing doesn’t necessarily mean a quick declaration. In Pennsylvania, rules against counting mail-in ballots before polls close are likely to slow things down. So it might end up being one of the later races to be called among the key states. It took four days in 2020.Whenever they come, if Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina all go in one candidate’s favour, it will be very difficult for the other to win – partly because of the electoral college arithmetic and partly because that would suggest that late-deciding voters may well have broken in similar numbers elsewhere. If we don’t get that sort of news by now, find some caffeine or a cocktail and pin your eyelids to your forehead, because we might be in for a long night.2am UK/9pm ET | Three more battleground statesIn this hour, polls will close in 15 more states, including three of the four remaining battlegrounds: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. But in 2016 and 2022 Wisconsin wasn’t called until after 2pm the following day. Arizona took more than a week in 2020, and there are more onerous rules in place around the count this time.It was around this time in 2016 – 2.29am, to be precise – that AP called the race for Trump, with Hillary Clinton calling to concede a few minutes later; in 2020, the result wasn’t called until the following Saturday.Another interesting state to watch in this hour: Iowa, where a shock poll at the weekend, by a usually reliable pollster, gave Harris a lead of three points in a state generally assumed to be a sure thing for Trump. If that bears out in reality, it probably won’t make a difference to the overall outcome – but only because it is likely to indicate that Harris has had a better night than expected in other similar states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.3am UK/10pm ET | NevadaPolls close in Nevada, the last swing state, this hour. It’s unlikely that its eight electoral college votes will be decisive, but if they are, things are probably going to feel uncertain for a while yet. It took 88 hours to call the state in 2020.Another question will be whether either candidate comes out to speak to their supporters, and when. Everything Trump has said suggests that it is very unlikely that he will concede defeat on election night, except in the unlikely event of a landslide defeat. (In 2020, he made a speech at the White House at 2.21am ET, in which he made his first false claims of electoral fraud.)The tone he and Harris strike in these hours and afterwards will give a sense of whether the result is going to be accepted all round – or if we could be in for a much more febrile period.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion4am/11pm ET | California, Alaska and everything afterThe last polls close over the next two hours, and while it is just about theoretically possible that it could all come down to Alaska, I wouldn’t bet your house on it. It seems significantly more likely that – whatever the candidates have said – if the race looks close, lawyers for both sides will be gearing up for court challenges in key states – while pro-Trump poll watchers and other supporters are likely to be making numerous claims of election interference.Last time around, exhaustive legal processes found similar claims to be without foundation, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be repeated. It is entirely possible that we will have a clear call of a result from the major networks by this time, but everything will still appear to be in flux.What else we’re readingView image in fullscreen

      Poppies have been an exhausting part of British political discourse for more than 20 years. Samira Shackle’s long read is a definitive exploration of how they shifted from “a modest sign of remembrance” to “a prop for performative patriotism”. Archie

      These days, every product, app and service seems to be designed to make life as frictionless, quick and easy as possible. But in this week’s edition of The Big Idea, Alex Curmi asks whether the relentless pursuit of hyper-convenience and optimisation is actually making life more difficult. Nimo

      Climate protesters’ contentious nonviolent tactics – such as throwing soup on expensive artwork and disrupting sports events – may draw attention to environmental issues, but they have also led to activists being accused of undermining their cause. In New York magazine, Elizabeth Weil explores the idea of the “climate anti-hero”. Nimo

      RIP Quincy Jones. It’s a fine occasion to revisit David Marchese’s rip-roaring 2018 interview with him for New York magazine, widely shared on social media yesterday. You will have your own favourite bit, but it’s his anecdote about Ringo Starr and shepherd’s pie, for me. Archie

      Justin McCurry has written a fascinating, bleak piece about the North Korean soldiers headed to Ukraine to join their Russian counterparts – desperately inexperienced, unfamiliar with the terrain, and said by many to be cannon fodder. Archie
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | A remarkable stoppage-time double from Harry Wilson (above) was enough to give Fulham a 2-1 win over Brentford. Vitaly Janelt’s first half goal looked to have secured all three points for the visitors until Wilson pounced with a flicked volley and a superb header.Rugby | The former Scotland rugby international Stuart Hogg has admitted abusing his estranged wife over the course of five years. Hogg, 32, had been due to stand trial at Selkirk sheriff court on Monday but pleaded guilty to a single charge when he appeared at the court yesterday.Football | Arsenal’s sporting director, Edu, is to leave the club and looks likely to join the network of clubs spearheaded by Evangelos Marinakis, the owner of Nottingham Forest. Edu’s shock departure will bring to an end his five years in Arsenal’s senior management and means Mikel Arteta will lose one of his major allies.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“Harris or Trump: US faces its moment of reckoning” – the Guardian’s splash headline today while the Daily Telegraph has “Farage tells Trump: Do not fight poll result”. “America decides – as world holds its breath” – that’s the i. The Financial Times has “America votes as polls show dead heat”. “Starmer’s 180 degree uni U turn” is the top story in the Metro while the Daily Mail says “Now that’s what you call a U-turn!” and in the Times it’s “Labour vow to improve universities as fees rise”. The Express wants a different reversal: “Labour has to U-turn on ‘spiteful’ farm tax”. “My broken heart” – Amy Dowden in the Mirror after having to quit Strictly Come Dancing.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenA road trip through Pennsylvania, the ultimate swing stateFrom traditional rural Republicans who won’t vote for Trump to Latino voters who will, Michael Safi finds voters taking surprising stances as he embarks on a road trip through the biggest swing state in the USCartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenIslamic State’s brutal three-year occupation of Mosul in northern Iraq was marked by the destruction of cultural sites and the banning of literature, arts and sports. Seven years since the occupation ended, the city’s poets and writers have begun to revitalise its rich literary heritage. Residents convene in a public reading club, where they can engage in open dialogue free from the fear of reprisal or judgment.“People want the city to rise again,” says Unesco adviser Wifaq Ahmed. “Writing is the simplest weapon people have to save our identity [and] history, and restore social cohesion.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      Trump and Harris in final election push as polls signal extremely close contest

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      Donald Trump and Kamala Harris closed out the tumultuous 2024 campaign with competing rallies across Pennsylvania, offering contrasting visions – and moods – in the final hours before polls opened in an election both candidates have cast as an existential fight for America’s future.In Philadelphia, Harris ended a frenetic dash across the state at the art museum steps made famous in the film Rocky – “a tribute to those who start out the underdog and climb to victory” – where tens of thousands of supporters gathered for the star-studded event.“Momentum is on our side,” Harris declared to roars from the crowd.Earlier in the day, Harris rallied in Allentown, Scranton and Pittsburgh. She also made stops in Reading to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and to join a canvas for her own presidential campaign. “I wanted to go door-knocking!” Harris told the family, stunned to see the vice-president on their porch.Trump, by contrast, appeared hoarse and exhausted at times, as barnstormed the battleground states, holding rallies in Raleigh, North Carolina, two in Pennsylvania and a late-evening event in Grand Rapids, Michigan – where he ended his two previous presidential campaigns. His remarks were dark and dystopian, rife with warnings that cast migrants as dangerous criminals and personal attacks on a number of high-profile Democratic women. He has continued to boast about his crowd sizes, but reports suggest some of his final events have been plagued by empty seats and early departures from audience members during his lengthy, meandering speeches.“Tonight, then, we finish, as we started, with optimism with energy, with joy,” said Harris, who was introduced by Oprah Winfrey in Philadelphia. Behind her, the steps were illuminated blue and a large “President for All” banner was displayed. It all matched the mood of Harris’s positive closing argument, an attempt to shift the focus away from the threat posed by the ex-president, whom she did not mention by name in her remarks or her final ad.Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin performed at the event, while Oprah Winfrey brought on-stage 10 first time voters to share their reason for supporting Harris. Winfrey perhaps provided the starkest warning of the night, suggesting a second Trump presidency be the end of free and fair elections in the United States.“If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”As the Harris campaign and its surrogates have continued to appeal to female voters, Trump revived familiar insults against notable women, sometimes with violent language.In North Carolina, he attacked former first lady Michelle Obama, saying: “She hit me the other day. I was going to say to my people, am I allowed to hit her now? They said, take it easy, sir.” He also suggested the Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi should have been jailed for ripping up a copy of his 2020 State of the Union address: “She’s a bad, sick woman, she’s crazy as a bedbug.”And Trump repeated his line that Harris is a “low IQ individual”, followed by an incoherent tangent seemingly imagining her struggling to sleep: “I don’t want to have her say, You know, I had an idea last night while I was sleeping, turning, tossing, sweating,” he said, without finishing the sentence.Trump leaned into his taunts as he continues to face scrutiny over his recent comment suggesting that Liz Cheney, the former GOP congresswoman and a Harris supporter, should face rifles “shooting at her”. Appearing on ABC’s The View on Monday, Cheney said, “Women are going to save the day” on Tuesday.In North Carolina, Trump also threatened the newly elected president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, suggesting he would impose tariffs on all Mexican goods “if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs” – part of his trade proposals that economists have warned could significantly raise costs for US consumers.At around the same time, Harris was rallying in Allentown, roughly 40 miles away, critiquing Trumpism without directly naming her opponent: “America is ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy but as a neighbour. We are ready for a president who understands that the true measure of the strength of the leader is not based on who you beat down. It is based on who you lift up.”Later, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, earned loud applause at a rally in Georgia, when he attacked Harris by bringing up Joe Biden’s recent gaffe, in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage”.“In two days, we are going to take out the trash in Washington DC, and the trash is named is Kamala Harris,” said the Ohio senator, in a remark that was condemned by Democrats and pundits.The back-and-forth trash talking originated with a comedian’s racist joke at Trump’s recent New York rally, calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”, a comment that many Harris surrogates cited on Monday while appealing to Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania.View image in fullscreenBy his evening rally in Pittsburgh, Trump returned to his crowd size obsession, making false claims about low turnout at Harris’s nearby rally that hadn’t yet begun. He then mocked Beyoncé, who rallied for Harris in Texas: “Everyone’s expecting a couple songs and there were no songs. There was no happiness.” He added, “We don’t need a star. I never had a star.”The final scramble to turn out voters comes as Trump continues to make false claims about voter fraud, raising fears about how he might challenge the results if Harris wins. In a call with reporters on Monday, the Harris campaign said it was prepared to combat any efforts by Trump to discredit the outcome.“We have hundreds of lawyers across the country ready to protect election results against any challenge that Trump might bring,” said Dana Remus, a senior campaign adviser and outside counsel. “This will not be the fastest process, but the law and the facts are on our side.”Legal challenges were designed to undermine faith in the electoral process, she added: “Keep in mind that the volume of cases does not equate to a volume of legitimate concerns. In fact, it just shows how desperate they’re becoming.”There are also growing fears that political violence will escalate on election day and beyond, as misinformation and conspiracy theories are expected to spread while counting is under way. Election officials in one Nevada county said on Monday that threats have become so severe that polling places have installed “panic buttons” to automatically call 911 in emergencies.At Trump’s Pittsburgh rally, Michael Barringer, a 55-year-old coalminer, expressed his disdain for undocumented immigrants in explaining his support for Trump: “You’ve got millions and millions of illegal aliens crossing the border. They don’t speak English. They don’t say a pledge allegiance to the flag. They freeload off of us. I’m all for legal immigration, but not coming across the border illegally, taking American jobs.”Elizabeth Slaby, 81, was the first in line at Harris’s Allentown rally, arriving at about 6am. She said she was a registered Republican for more than 50 years, but changed her registration after the January 6 attack: “I never thought I’d see a woman president and now I’m so, so excited.”Sam Levine Smith contributed reportingRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

      US election 2024 live updates: latest polls, results and news

      When do polls close?

      How the electoral college works

      Where is abortion on the ballot?

      Senate and House races to watch

      Lessons from the key swing states

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake in this election

      What to know about the US election More

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      Musk-linked Pac accused of targeting Jewish and Arab Americans in swing states

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      A political action committee (Pac) linked to Elon Musk is accused of targeting Jewish and Arab American voters in swing states with dramatically different messages about Kamala Harris’s position on Gaza, a strategy by Trump allies aimed at peeling off Democratic support for the vice-president.Texts, mailers, social media ads and billboards targeting heavily Arab American areas in metro Detroit paint Harris as a staunch ally of Israel who will continue supplying arms to the country. Meanwhile, residents in metro Detroit or areas of Pennsylvania with higher Jewish populations have been receiving messaging that underscores her alleged support for the Palestinian cause.Those aimed at Arab American populations claim Harris will “ALWAYS stand with Israel” and “stand up against Hamas and radical terrorists in Gaza”. Another notes that she has a Jewish husband, and describes the pair as “America’s pro-Israel power couple”.

      Don’t miss important US election coverage. Get our free app and sign up for election alerts
      Meanwhile, texts and mailers sent to heavily Jewish areas claim “two faced Kamala stands with Palestine”, picturing her in front of a Palestinian flag. A Pennsylvania ad asked: “Why did Kamala Harris support denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands? And why did Harris show sympathy for college protesters who are rabidly antisemitic?”The different ads, produced by the Future Coalition Pac, can be viewed in Google’s ad transparency center.“They are stirring up and trying to create trouble,” Mark Brewer, a Michigan elections attorney and former head of the state’s Democratic party, told the Guardian. Messages depicting Harris as pro-Israel or having a Jewish husband in Michigan “are not designed to help her – they’re designed to hurt her”.Metro Detroit has the largest Arab American population in the US per capita, until this election a solidly Democratic voting bloc that helped boost the party in the divided swing state. But the Trump campaign has made inroads with the groups as frustration mounts over the Biden administration’s support for Israel in its bombardments of Gaza and Lebanon.Another Musk Pac is separately facing legal action and backlash for mistreating canvassers, including failing to pay them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMany mailers and billboards are from Future Coalition, which was established in July. In its Federal Election Commission (FEC) paperwork, the Pac claims its ads are in support of Harris, despite the fact that those in Michigan clearly aim to sabotage her. The only funding it recorded was a $3m contribution from the Musk-funded Building America’s Future non-profit.One billboard from the group in a heavily Arab American Michigan area is more open about its aims: it states that the Democratic US Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin, who is Jewish and in a tight race with her GOP counterpart, is “more focused on arming Israel than helping your family”.But some people in Arab American areas around Detroit report receiving up to five text messages a day from unidentified senders touting Harris’s alleged support for Israel. The FEC does not require organizations sending political texts to identify themselves, Brewer said, which he called “a real problem and a big loophole”. The FEC in 2002 ruled that identification in text messages was not required in part because the messages of character limits on the messages.The same Pac is producing purportedly pro-Harris ads targeting Pennsylvania on issues unrelated to Gaza, one of which reads: “Imagine a world where the American Dream has no borders,” and features a photo of migrants at the US border. More

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      The Guardian view on America’s electoral college: time to scrap an antidemocratic relic | Editorial

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      The last two presidential elections have raised serious questions about the strength of American democracy and, unfortunately, Tuesday’s election may deepen these concerns. Central to this issue is the electoral college, which allows Americans to elect their president indirectly through state-appointed electors. Though the electoral college has stirred controversy for more than 200 years, Donald Trump’s 2016 victory – despite losing the popular vote by 3 million – intensified the sense that the system undermines democratic principles. It would be gut-wrenching to see the unhinged, vengeful and power-hungry Mr Trump win because of the electoral college’s antidemocratic result.Yet that might happen. Post-civil war, four presidents – all Republicans – have lost the popular vote yet won the White House via the electoral college. Mr Trump’s 2024 campaign has seemed intent on repeating this feat or creating enough chaos to push the election to the House of Representatives, where Republican delegations are likely to prevail. His strategy relies on divisive rhetoric, marked by inflammatory and often discriminatory themes. Rather than bridging divides, he aims to deepen them – seeking an electoral college win by rallying his most fervent supporters.With numerous legal challenges expected, the final election outcome may be delayed for days. In 2020, despite losing the popular vote by 7 million, Mr Trump refused to concede and sought to undermine the certification process. The electoral college’s complex mechanics allow room for exploitation, a vulnerability that Mr Trump appears willing to leverage, even if it means inciting violence. Now he is laying the groundwork for future claims of fraud with a barrage of lies, preparing to cry foul if he loses again.Under the electoral college, candidates must secure 270 electors, a majority of the 538 at stake, in order to win. Supporters argue that by granting each state a set number of electoral votes and adopting the winner-take-all system in all but two states, the electoral college compels candidates to engage with diverse regions across the country. In theory, this fosters nationwide attention, but in practice it often fails to achieve this goal. Kamala Harris and Mr Trump have focused their efforts in the large, competitive states. Ms Harris has concentrated her efforts on the “blue wall” of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – which current polls suggest would be enough to put her in the White House. Mr Trump needs just Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. In Pennsylvania alone, the Harris and Trump campaigns have collectively spent $576m in political advertising.In his book Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America, the historian George C Edwards III points out that Gallup polls over the past 50 years show most “Americans have continually expressed support for the notion of an official amendment of the US constitution that would allow for direct election of the president”. It isn’t a fantasy. In 1969, the House passed such an amendment with a strong bipartisan vote, backed by Richard Nixon. Three-fourths of states signalled support. But it was killed in the Senate by a filibuster led by southern senators who feared that a popular vote would empower African Americans. The most prominent effort to get rid of the electoral college today is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Tim Walz, Ms Harris’s running mate, backs scrapping the present system. Is it possible to abolish the electoral college? It shouldn’t need the nightmare of a second Trump presidency to reform this antidemocratic relic of the 18th century.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Five US election officials on what they’re expecting: ‘There’s a conspiracy theory for everything’

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      In Fulton county, Georgia, they’re on guard for efforts to undermine democracy from Republican members of the state elections board. In Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, they’re defending themselves as conspiracy theories swirl. And in Cochise county, Arizona, they’re preparing to certify the results shortly after one of their colleagues pleaded guilty to refusing to do so in the last election.Election officials are the first line of defense for democracy this election – and their job is anything but easy.For years, they have worked in relative obscurity as they administered the vote in a non-partisan way. But Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election unleashed a wave of harassment and pressure on these officials never seen before. Many have chosen to leave the profession, and those that have stuck around find themselves in a job that looks dramatically different from the low-profile one they once held.The Guardian has been following five election offices across the country for the last year, examining how staff turnover, election denialism and misinformation have affected their work, mental health and physical safety.On the eve of election day, we checked in with the officials, many in swing states, who will be working around the clock to ensure that all votes are counted.Fulton county, GeorgiaSheri Allen and Julie Adams rhetorically circled each other at the election board meeting like boxers in a ring.Allen, chairperson of the Fulton county board of registration and elections, and Adams, one of two recalcitrant Republican members of the board, were negotiating terms for which election documents Adams could inspect over the next week or two.But really, they were probing each other for an angle – some hidden danger or exposed weakness or intent behind their words.“I can see where this conversation is going,” Adams said at the board meeting last Wednesday, “but I want to renew the request that I have made, and I would like to see the reports from poll watchers, poll workers and voters that have had issues, complaints or comments, and how we react.”Allen is a personal injury attorney and approached Adams’s inquiries like a lawyer might. The two sparred over how to define a problem that should rise to the board’s notice, about whether Adams could have an electronic copy of the list of voters who had cast ballots in Fulton county – in order of their vote, by precinct – and whether she could be physically present as election workers popped the seals on the boxes of early vote ballots on election day.Under other conditions, Adams’s request to get reports in real time about problems at polling locations, or a list of voters who had cast a ballot, would raise no alarms.In Fulton county, the alarms never stop.After the 2020 election in Georgia, Trump and others issued florid and extravagant lies about Fulton county and the conduct of its poll workers. Though recounts showed that the election was fair and accurate, every error made by the county has been amplified by conservative partisans.County elections officials have been in a state of hyper-vigilance ever since, wondering which mistake might draw the heavens down upon them, or from which rock the next fountain of misinformation will spring.“With all that is on the line for this election, why would we keep throwing in additional new ways of doing things?” asked board vice-chairperson Aaron Johnson. “I’m on the record today; this is going to cause chaos. I don’t know that it’s intentional.”Adams, who works for a Trump-aligned group, sued the county earlier this year seeking a ruling to establish that she and other elections board members in Georgia had the legal right to refuse to certify an election if they think it didn’t meet their standards. A judge rejected that position, ruling instead that certification is a ministerial act mandated by the Georgia constitution.But Judge Robert McBurney also ruled that Adams has a right to review documents in advance of the certification vote, though a second judge in a separate case ruled that counties are not obligated to provide volumes of poll data and administrative paperwork to elections superintendents.At the board meeting on Wednesday, Adams’s request to have an electronic copy of the voter list was denied in a 3-2 vote. Allen cited security considerations. Instead, the county will make a hard paper copy available for her review, no phone recording allowed. If the elections director has to send a report to the secretary of state’s office about a polling problem, the board will get a note too. And Adams will be able to watch the first ballots come out of the box for counting at 2pm sharp on election day.Cochise county, ArizonaIn rural Cochise county, Arizona, a Republican haven along the US-Mexico border, there are Democratic candidates running for the three open county supervisor seats and a recorder position – something that hasn’t happened in recent memory.The Democratic activation came after several years of rampant election denialism culminated in criminal charges against two supervisors who initially refused to certify the county’s election results in 2022. Those charges followed attempts to hand-count ballots and after an experienced elections director quit over a hostile work environment. The county is on its fifth elections director since 2022.“I think it speaks volumes to the frustration that people have with their local government,” said Elisabeth Tyndall, the chair of the local Democratic party, that “people were willing to step up and run for those seats, even in light of all of the chaos”.One of the supervisors, Peggy Judd, recently agreed to a plea deal, accepting a misdemeanor charge that brings probation and a fine. The other supervisor, Tom Crosby, hasn’t done the same – and he refused to vote to certify the 2022 results even after a court required the county to do so.

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      Tyndall said, despite the upheaval, she trusts the elections department to carry out a successful election. About 100 ballots in one precinct were missing a supervisor’s race, an error that the county rectified by sending corrected ballots to those affected and having some on hand on election day at the polls. It was a “fixable mistake” that Tyndall said the county remedied fairly.Still, the specter of refusing to certify looms over the 2024 results – as jurisdictions around the country toy with the idea of whether they have to sign off on election results, a non-discretionary task. Judd’s probation lasts through the certification, and prosecutors said that timing was intentional to ideally prevent a repeat of 2022. Crosby, who has been the more vocal elections critic, hasn’t indicated his plans.“Honestly, it will be very difficult for them to not certify,” Tyndall said.Hillsdale county, MichiganAbe Dane is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.Dane, who administers elections in Hillsdale county, Michigan, has spent the last four years challenging the election-related disinformation and conspiracy theories that have taken hold in his conservative community all while getting ready to run his first presidential election.“We’re not a heavily staffed office, and most of our staff are dealing with everything outside of elections,” said Dane. “So it’s a lot, but I have a wonderful group of township and city clerks that I’m very close with.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThis year, Dane has full confidence in the local election officials running the show in the small towns and cities that make up Hillsdale county. That wasn’t always the case.In 2020, the clerk in Adams Township was drawn into Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election. Scott didn’t only accept Trump’s claims of a stolen election. She believed Michigan’s presidential election had been corrupted by nefarious forces in favor of Joe Biden, who many in Hillsdale county could not believe won the 2020 election. Egging her on was Stefanie Lambert, a Michigan lawyer who in the wake of the 2020 election took on numerous cases challenging the results.After the election, the state of Michigan alleges Scott and Lambert illegally turned over private voter data to an outside group in their search for fraud – for which they currently face multiple felony charges. When Scott refused to turn over voting equipment for mandatory maintenance, the state stripped her of her authority to administer elections in 2021. Two years later, voters ousted her in a recall election that was widely viewed as a test of the power of election denialism in the deep-red community.Scott, who challenged Dane in the Republican primary for the position overseeing elections in Hillsdale county, enjoys the support of a small but vocal coterie of activists who maintain their belief that the 2020 election was stolen. After Scott and a slate of so-called America First candidates lost their primary elections in August, Dane says the group has quieted down. But that hasn’t stopped the flow of conspiracy theories, which he says “disseminate from the top down”.“I still have people that I know, love and respect in my circles that believe some of the stuff, and I have to continually try and either bite my tongue, or if the opportunity presents itself, try and educate them on what the facts are,” said Dane.Dane has been preparing security measures for months in advance of the election, coordinating with local law enforcement officials to continually monitor polling places on election day. But he says he is more concerned about the bread-and-butter of election administration – processing early and absentee ballots, helping poll workers adapt to new processes and technology, and preparing for inevitable human errors.Luzerne county, PennsylvaniaLuzerne county, an industrial battleground in north-eastern Pennsylvania, is facing a wave of conspiracy theories on the eve of the election.In late October, the county was doing some routine shredding of documents. When someone spotted the truck for the shredding company in front of the county’s office building, which also houses its election offices, it set off conspiracy theories. Romilda Crocamo, the county manager, quickly started hearing online that the county was shredding ballots, which of course wasn’t true.“There’s a conspiracy theory for everything,” she said. “There is nothing that we can say or do that will convince the people who believe in conspiracies to change their minds. I feel badly for those people. I don’t know how you live that way.”Crocamo is also worried about violence. During the early voting period, she had to call a sheriff to the elections office because two people were fighting. Someone called a bureau employee a racial slur. Another person spit on an employee.She said the county was adding barriers to control traffic into the office. Government employees will be required to go through a metal detector on election day.Scott Pressler, a conservative activist who has been registering voters in the state, suggested there was voter registration fraud in the county. As officials in another county investigate possible fraudulent registrations, Pressler suggested that there could be something amiss about voter registrations that were dropped off at the registration deadline by Beth Gilbert McBride, a voting rights organizer. McBride served as head of the Luzerne county election office in 2022 when it ran out of paper on election day.The claim was amplified by the Gateway Pundit, the influential far-right website that has become a powerful vector of election misinformation. Days later, the Luzerne county district attorney said that between 20 and 30 forms had been dropped off at the deadline, and none of them were fraudulent.Shasta county, CaliforniaVoting in Shasta county, a conservative stronghold in far northern California, will largely proceed as normal.That’s disappointing to the small but vocal group of residents who hoped to see radical changes in the community of 180,000 people that has attracted national attention for its far-right politics and embrace of election denialism.A band of local activists convinced of widespread voter fraud and stolen elections have been relentless in their efforts to uncover evidence of tampering. The group successfully lobbied officials, some of whom have also spread election misinformation, to throw out the county’s voting machines and institute a hand-count system. When the head of the elections office retired, the county replaced her with someone who had no experience and who election skeptics thought would be sympathetic.They believed they would be able to remake the voting system, but their efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. State lawmakers thwarted plans for a hand-count system with a bill preventing counties from using manual tallies in most elections. The new elections clerk has pushed back against proposals that would violate election law and said he won’t make any major changes to county election processes.At a tense and widely attended meeting of the county’s governing body last week, several expressed disappointment in the registrar of voters.“You cannot certify the election next Tuesday, no matter what happens because of what’s happening in that office,” one man said, asking officials to “put pressure on” the registrar.There’s discontent among that group, said Jeff Gorder, a retired county public defender, but after years of upheaval and violent rhetoric in the area things feel surprisingly calm: “It seems to be a milder environment right now.”Some elected officials have continued to sow doubt, though. Patrick Jones, a county official who was recently voted out of office, suggested to journalists that if Trump does not win it would be due to cheating.“It’s pretty obvious to most of us that he should easily win this and if they cheat him out of it again I think the response from the public is going to be very different unfortunately,” he said. “They can certainly cheat but there’ll be a price for that.”Still, Nathan Blaze, a local activist and chef, said he expects election day will proceed without issue. He plans to act as an observer at the elections office to ensure that workers there, who have faced increased harassment in recent years, can do their jobs without interference. More

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      History in the making: is the US finally about to elect its first female president?

      by

      “This is monumental,” said 19-year-old Kai Carter as she stood in line behind the White House where Kamala Harris was about to take the stage a week before the 5 November election.Carter was ecstatic at the prospect of Harris making history as the first Black female president of the United States. She attended the event with a group of fellow students from Howard University, the historically Black college in Washington DC, which is also the vice-president’s alma mater.Born in the United States of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, Harris, the first female vice-president, is also potentially on the verge of becoming the first Asian American president, as well the country’s first female president. Yet she is not making a big deal about it.In her closing argument in Washington DC before one of the most consequential elections in the country’s history, Harris did not refer to her gender or her race or how she may be breaking a glass ceiling. It’s not something she brings up often on the campaign trail, choosing instead to focus on her middle-class upbringing and how she hopes to be a president for “all Americans”.Her central message that night was about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. “This election is more than a choice between two parties and two different candidates. It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American. Or one ruled by chaos and division.”Unlike Hillary Clinton, who made gender a central part of her 2016 run for office, at a time of historic polarization Harris chose to focus on issues over identity. That is also how she chose to run her unusually short campaign of 13 weeks after an ageing Biden finally passed her the mantle on 21 July.Laurie Pohutsky, a Democratic state representative in Michigan, decided to run in 2018 after witnessing Trump’s misogynistic campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Since then, she has introduced two key pieces of state legislation that lifted restrictions on abortion. In a phone interview from the swing state governed by the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, she said: “You know, we weren’t elected because we were women. And I think that when we frame it that way, we do a disservice to ourselves.”She said she agreed with Harris’s choice not to focus on gender: “While it’s historic, it’s not what would make her a good president.”“We’re long overdue for a female president,” she added. “But that’s not why I think people are voting for her. They’re voting for her because of her record and the work that she’s done and the things that she believes, versus what we know Donald Trump believes.”Identity politicsIn the face of misogyny and racism, it is Harris’s detractors who have attempted to use her identity against her. Republicans regularly mispronounce her name or call her a “DEI hire”.At the beginning of her campaign, Trump sought to steer the conversation towards race in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, questioning whether Harris is indeed Black. Many recognize these personal attacks as Trump’s hallmark. Their purpose is to undermine debate, take his opponent off script, stoke division and ultimately attract media attention.Christina Reynolds, senior vice-president for communications for Emily’s List, a political action committee that backs pro-choice Democratic female candidates, including Harris, explains that women are often the butt of personal attacks whereas men are attacked for their policies. Reynolds has witnessed this first-hand after working on five presidential campaigns, including Hillary Clinton’s.This is just one example of the double standards women and particularly women of color face to get to the top. Another is the pressure on women to be both likable and competent, whereas a man can be one or the other. Research by UC Berkeley’s Hass School of Business also shows that women in positions of power lose likability. This is particularly true of successful middle-aged women.In 2016, Trump accused Clinton of being a “nasty woman” while male pundits told her to “smile” more. When Harris, a former prosecutor, successfully grilled Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing for the supreme court, Trump accused her too of being “nasty”.A champion of women’s rightsDespite Harris’s attempts to detract attention from her gender and race, she has campaigned heavily on the issue of women’s rights. “She may not frame things in terms of her gender, but the first president or vice-president to invite abortion providers to the White House and to visit an abortion provider – both of those firsts were Kamala Harris,” Reynolds said.The overturning of Roe v Wade by three Trump-appointed supreme court justices in 2022 placed women’s rights at the forefront of voters’ concerns. The right to abortion was a hard-fought battle that was won in 1973. A poll from May 2024 from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center suggested that 63% of Americans believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases.In perhaps one of the most moving moments of the Democratic national convention, three women told their harrowing personal stories of being denied medical care in states where abortions are restricted.At the closing rally in Washington DC, Harris suggested Trump could take things even further: “He would ban abortion nationwide, restrict access to birth control and put IVF at risk and force states to monitor women’s pregnancies,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris has also proposed policies to appeal to people – especially women – who need to care for parents and young children at the same time, known as the sandwich generation. She talks about how she had to care for her mother before she died of cancer in 2009, and she has talked about her plan to have Medicare pay for home healthcare.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

      When do polls close?

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake and what else to know
      Signs of progressHarris is running for office in a divided country, with Trump threatening violence against his political opponents. “On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list,” she said in DC last week to a crowd of more than 75,000 people.And while in her closing argument the Democratic nominee made clear that she pledged to be a “president for all Americans” and “to always put country above party and above self”, at the same time Reynolds noted that “she has taken the communities that she has been a part of” and ensured that they “have a voice” and “that they are included in conversations”.As Americans watched Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House and Harris as vice-president sitting behind Biden as he gave his first address to Congress in April 2021, they were reminded of how women are increasingly occupying positions of power. The numbers tell a similar story. According to data provided by the Center for American Women and Politics, in 2017 the US had 105 female members of Congress out of 535. Today the number has reached 150, including rising stars such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett.“We still have a long way to go,” said Reynolds. But people no longer hear the word “candidate” “with the assumption that a candidate is a man”.“And that’s progress,” she added.At Harris’s closing address in Washington DC, Elaine Callahan, a self-described independent voter, felt compelled to back Harris in 2024: “It is historic. Yes!”But as polls show Harris and Trump neck and neck in many swing states, she remembers what happened to Clinton back in 2016 and is prompted to “pray to God there will be a shift”. More