AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
Trump or Biden? Big turnout, few hiccups as voters choose
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of voters braved coronavirus concerns and occasional long lines Tuesday to choose between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden in an epic election that will influence how the U.S. confronts everything from the pandemic to race relations for years to come.
Those who turned out in person joined 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73% of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election.
Spirits were high — and positive — in many polling places after a long, exceptionally divisive campaign.
“The most important issue is for us to set aside our personal differences that we have with each other,” said Eboni Price, 29, who rode her horse Moon to her polling place in a northwest Houston neighborhood.
Biden entered Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump, playing catch-up in a number of battleground states, had a narrower but still feasible road to clinch 270 Electoral College votes. Control of the Senate was at stake, too: Democrats needed to net three seats if Biden captured the White House to gain control of all of Washington for the first time in a decade. The House was expected to remain under Democratic control.
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2020 Latest: Votes in SC county can't be counted immediately
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the presidential campaign (all times local):
5:45 p.m.
More than 13,000 votes in one South Carolina county will have to wait a while to be counted because of a printing error.
Dorchester County Election Commissioner Todd Billman said at a news conference Tuesday that the mail-in ballots did not have the proper bars printed at the top so the scanner used to count the votes won’t register them. He says the error does not affect anyone's vote.
The votes will have to be counted by hand and will not be counted Tuesday. Billman says Dorchester County’s full results will be finished by the Friday deadline to certify returns.
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GOP maneuvers to challenge battleground absentee ballots
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are keeping their legal options open to challenge absentee ballots in Pennsylvania, if the battleground state could swing President Donald Trump's reelection. A top Democratic lawyer says the suits are meant to sow doubt about the results and lack merit.
Two federal lawsuits aim to prevent absentee votes from being counted. The GOP already has laid the groundwork at the Supreme Court for an effort to exclude ballots that arrive after polls close Tuesday. Trump has railed over several days about the high court's pre-election refusal to rule out those ballots.
"You have to have numbers. You can’t have these things delayed for many days and maybe weeks. You can’t do that. The whole world is waiting,” Trump said Tuesday at his campaign headquarters.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Republicans and a local voter accused county officials in suburban Philadelphia of improperly sorting deficient ballots before Tuesday to give voters a chance to fix problems. The suit comes after county Republicans noted a pile of ballots set aside, during a walk-through of operations at the county courthouse in Norristown on Sunday.
Neither suit will matter in the long run unless the gap between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden is so small that a few thousand votes, or even a few hundred, could make the difference.
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'Vote and get home,' anxious voters say on Election Day
She carefully planned a five-hour drive to the polling place in her Tennessee hometown to vote on Election Day. She considered the traffic, the weather, the surging coronavirus pandemic and — something she never imagined having to contemplate — the possibility of civil unrest in the aftermath of an American election.
The last four years have delivered so many shocks that anything seemed possible to Lacey Stannard, the wife of a soldier. She had tried to get an absentee ballot sent to her home on a military base on the other side of the state. But the clerk in her hometown refused. A part of her thought it was crazy to drive 10 hours roundtrip to cast a Democratic vote in deep-red Tennessee, but a larger part thought it was worth it to register her displeasure.
Many Americans who lined up before dawn to vote on Election Day are exhausted from constant crises, uneasy because of volatile political divisions and anxious about what will happen next. Like those who cast ballots early, their agony is not in deciding between President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Most made that choice long ago. Instead, those voting in record numbers say basic democratic foundations feel suddenly brittle: Will their vote count? Will the loser accept the result? Will the winner find a way to repair a fractured, sick and unsettled nation?
Stannard, a 28-year-old mother of two, hit the road Monday evening to arrive at the polls early on Election Day, only to turn around and rush home before an uncertain conclusion might aggravate a nation already on edge — fear she blames on the president’s penchant for pitting people against each other.
“When the election results start trickling in, I would rather be safe at home, which is sad because never in my life... would I have thought I have to hurry up and vote and get home so that I wouldn’t have to be fearful,” she said. “Which is one of the reasons I’m driving five hours to vote because I shouldn’t have to feel that way.”
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EXPLAINER: What's happening with Election Day 'robocalls'?
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Election officials in a handful of states are warning voters to disregard “robocalls” urging them to stay home rather than go to the polls. It’s unclear whether the calls are part of any partisan agenda. They have hit Republican-leaning states as well as Democratic ones.
WHAT ARE THE ROBOCALLS?
One series of them appears to have gone out around the country and doesn't reference the election. Another appears targeted specifically at voters in Flint, Michigan, a Democratic stronghold with a large African-American population.
WHAT ELECTION OFFICIALS ARE SAYING
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AP PHOTOS: At churches, schools and stadiums, America votes
Americans are choosing between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden in what many are calling the most consequential presidential election in a lifetime, with the balloting shadowed by the coronavirus outbreak, economic downturn, racial tension and a sense that the future of democracy itself is at stake.
Voters flocked to polling places around the country before sunrise to cast their ballots on Election Day. They stood at a safe distance from one another in lines that snaked around schools, stadiums and churches.
Because of the huge volume of mail-in votes, the outcome may not be known for days or even weeks and could wind up in in court.
In downtowns ranging from New York to Denver to Minneapolis, workers boarded up businesses lest the vote — or uncertainty about the winner — lead to unrest of the sort that broke out earlier this year amid protests over racial inequality.
Associated Press photographers fanned out across the U.S. to capture voting on Election Day.
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Virus hospitalizations surge as pandemic shadows US election
Americans went to the polls Tuesday under the shadow of a resurging pandemic, with an alarming increase in cases nationwide and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 reaching record highs in a growing number of states.
While daily infections were rising in all but three states, the surge was most pronounced in the Midwest and Southwest.
Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and New Mexico all reported record high hospitalizations this week. Nebraska’s largest hospitals started limiting elective surgeries and looked to bring in nurses from other states to cope with the surge. Hospital officials in Iowa and Missouri warned bed capacity could soon be overwhelmed.
The resurgence loomed over candidates and voters, fearful of both the virus itself and the economic toll of any new shutdowns to control its spread. The debate over how far to take economically costly measures has divided a country already sharply polarized over President Donald Trump’s turbulent four years in office.
The pandemic colored who voters chose at the ballot box and how they did it. While many Americans took advantage of expanded access to mail-in voting, lines were long in many polling places, with record turnout expected and reminders of the pandemic were everywhere.
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Stocks rally worldwide on Election Day; S&P 500 climbs 1.8%
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks powered higher Tuesday as investors hope the end of a bruising U.S. presidential campaign may soon lift the heavy uncertainty that’s sent markets spinning recently.
The S&P 500 rose 58.92 points, or 1.8%, to 3,369.16 for its second straight healthy gain. The rally was widespread and global, with Treasury yields, oil prices and stocks around the world all strengthening.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 554.98, or 2.1%, to 27,480.03, and the Nasdaq composite added 202.96, or 1.9%, to 11,160.57.
More than anything, what investors hope for from the election is a clear winner to emerge, even if it takes some time for all the votes to be tallied. Whether that’s President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden is less important, because history shows stocks tend to rise regardless of which party controls the White House.
“The markets are neither red nor blue, and today they’re decidedly green,” said Rod von Lipsey, managing director at UBS Private Wealth Management.
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Gunman who killed 4 in Vienna attack had sought to join IS
VIENNA (AP) — A man who had previously tried to join the Islamic State group rampaged in Vienna armed with an automatic rifle and a fake explosive vest, fatally shooting four people before he was killed by police, Austrian authorities said Tuesday.
Witnesses described dozens of screaming people fleeing the sounds of gunshots Monday night in a nightlife district crowded with revelers enjoying the last hours before a coronavirus lockdown.
Others barricaded themselves inside restaurants for hours until they were sure the danger had passed. Video that appeared to be from the scene showed a gunman, dressed in white coveralls, firing off bursts seemingly at random as he ran down the Austrian capital’s dark cobblestone streets.
While the attack lasted just minutes, authorities said only on Tuesday afternoon that there was no indication of a second attacker — adding to tension in the capital as residents were urged to stay home.
Two men and two women died from their injuries in the attack — including one German woman, according to Germany’s foreign minister. Authorities said a police officer who tried to get in the way of the attacker was shot and wounded, along with 21 other people.
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Hurricane Eta slams into Nicaragua as Category 4 storm
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — The heart of powerful Hurricane Eta began moving ashore in Nicaragua Tuesday with devastating winds and rains that had already destroyed rooftops and caused rivers to overflow.
The hurricane had sustained winds of 140 mph (220 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, down from an overnight peak of 150 mph (240 kph). Even before it made landfall, Honduras reported the first death after a mudslide trapped a 12-year-old girl in San Pedro Sula.
Tuesday afternoon, the Category 4 hurricane was still on the coast, about 15 miles (25 kilometers) south-southwest of coastal Puerto Cabezas or Bilwi, and it was moving west near 5 mph (7 kph).
Landfall came hours after it had been expected. Eta's eye had hovered just offshore through the night and Tuesday morning. The unceasing winds uprooted trees and ripped roofs apart, scattering corrugated metal through the streets of Bilwi, the main coastal city in the region. The city's regional hospital abandoned its building, moving patients to a local technical school campus.
“It was an intense night for everyone in Bilwi, Waspam and the communities along the northern coast,” Yamil Zapata, local Bilwi representative of the ruling Sandinista Front, told local Channel 4 Tuesday.