US Elections 2024 Voting: Tight Race To The White House Underway; Voting Open Across States

• All focus is on battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as the swing states are expected to play a crucial role in shaping the final electoral verdict.

• By Monday, over 80 million registered voters have exercised their right to franchise and in some of the key battleground states, more than 50 per cent of the electors had already voted.

• Even though almost always the candidate who gets the maximum votes nationwide wins the election. But, technically, Americans don’t vote directly for their president. The pathway includes voting for presidential electors in respective states – and these groups from all states come together to form the 538-member electoral college that picks the next president.

• Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris advocated for abortion rights and pledged to lower food and housing costs for working families. Her Republican counterpart Donald Trump this time focused on sealing the border and proposed tax cuts worth trillions.

• US Presidential Election result will possibly take days to determine, given tight margins expected in seven swing states, reports stated. In US due to mail-in ballots and the time required to count all votes, a winner may not be declared for several days. It means necessarily a winner may not be announced on November 5.

All focus this time will be on battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as the swing states are expected to play a crucial role in shaping the final electoral verdict.

For the 2024 elections, women's rights, especially the right to abortion and reproductive healthcare has taken centre-stage. Following the overturning of Roe v Wade in  June 2022, abortion was made illegal across various states.

The state of the American economy has also been a major concern for voters. With inflation and unemployment at an all-time high, America is looking for a President that can turn the situation around.

Apart from numerous domestic issues, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine will also play a key factor in the way Americans will vote. In Gaza, majority of Americans have called for Israel to halt its operations and for the US to divest from Israeli companies and halt its supply of arms and weapons which add to the bombardment of the Gaza Strip and now Lebanon.

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Whether in swing states like Arizona or deeply conservative ones like Georgia, young women are speaking up, mobilising and preparing to make their voices heard on what may be the defining issue of the 2024 presidential election—reproductive rights.

What’s striking is how this shift has galvanised young women across America. With eight million new voters eligible in 2024, they could be the key to determining the election. According to Change Research, three in four young voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and four in ten (40 per cent) women under 30 now name abortion as their top issue, a figure that has doubled since earlier this year. Kamala Harris’ campaign has leaned into this momentum, and her focus on reproductive rights is resonating deeply with younger voters. Among younger Democratic women, trust in Harris’ handling of abortion has surged from 35 per cent to 66 per cent since June.

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As per reports, polling locations have opened in eight states including those in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire and Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky and Maine at 6AM ET (Eastern Time Zone).

At midnight, the tiny New Hampshire township of Dixville Notch voted following a decades-long tradition where Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied with three votes each.

According to the Associated Press, by Monday, over 80 million registered voters have exercised their right to franchise and in some of the key battleground states, more than 50 per cent of the electors had already voted.

Early voting is considered to be advantageous to the Democratic Party given the past trend of the last two election cycles. The Trump Campaign in a confidential memo argued that that might not be the case this time.

(Via AP)

Tokyo’s Haneda international airport is not exactly bustling but quietly active. On a clear day, one can see the majestic Mount Fuji from observation points in the airport but today is dismally cloudy. I get quickly tired of snaking through shops. The lounge is the other option. It is uncomfortable and its penne, the lone dish available for vegetarians, terrible. The food in the flight, on the other hand, is surprisingly good.

The person who is sitting across me is an Indian working with Google. She tells me that sanity is slowly returning to her company, but she is not very much sure about the political sanity. “I of course support Kamala Harris, but I sincerely hope her IQ will get unfrozen in the days to come.” “Trump,” she says, “is a monster of terrifying proportions. His victory will mark the beginning of the end of US democracy.”

“Kamala’s victory may mark the beginning of the end of the world,” I interject rather provocatively. “Trump is bad, but he is not a war monger. The neocons who control the Democratic Party are. The party’s victory may plunge the world into a Third World War.” She says, “Kamala is not Biden, but yes, the armament industry wants war and these guys are in its pocket.”

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After the initial opening of polling booths at eight polling station, several other states have opened voting as well at 7AM (ET) including, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington DC.

How long will America build walls and make wars? How long before Americans realise that reproductive rights are, in fact, about the freedom of women and they must be free to make that choice?

It is almost sinister and now that we are thoroughly moored in this dystopian world where all promises that America made to itself and to the world have been turned upside down, it is no wonder that no matter which president comes and rules from the White House, it will be the whiteness that will reign. By whiteness, I mean many things.

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Soon after the Hamas attack on Israel last October, which killed 1,139 people, there was overwhelming support and sympathy for Israel. Biden and America stood like a rock behind Israel. Washington has provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since the attack. It has also sent warships and military aircraft to the Eastern Mediterranean to bolster Israel’s defence and provided intelligence inputs and satellite pictures. More importantly, Washington provided Israel with political and diplomatic cover, even as it broke all rules of war enshrined in the Geneva Convention.

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The US has 50 states and most of them vote for the same party in every election except the swing states. Based on the volume of population, the states are assigned electoral college votes.

Overall, a total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs. A candidate with 270 or more electoral votes is declared winner.

If Harris wins the race, history will be made as she will become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to become the US President.

(Via AP)

Voting is underway in more than half of US as the polling stations are open in more states including Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin. Earlier 20 states had opened polling stations.

In anticipation of poll violence, according to the Associated Press, the officials from 47 states and three U.S. territories have urged people to maintain peace and “condemn any acts of violence related to the results.”

The official statement was signed by chief prosecutors from every U.S. state except Indiana, Montana, and Texas. Attorneys general from the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands and U.S. Virgin Islands also signed.

“We call upon every American to vote, participate in civil discourse and, above all, respect the integrity of the democratic process,” they wrote. “Violence has no place in the democratic process; we will exercise our authority to enforce the law against any illegal acts that threaten it.”

Even though almost always the candidate who gets the maximum votes nationwide wins the election. But, technically, Americans don’t vote directly for their president.

The pathway includes voting for presidential electors in respective states – and these groups from all states come together to form the 538-member electoral college that picks the next president.

The candidate who gets 270 or more electoral votes gets the top job for the next four years.

Memory is rather an inconvenient thing for politics. Not long ago, I remember, Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, was known as a champion for immigrant rights in the Senate, and even later during her 2020 presidential bid. At the time she, like her party, embraced an unequivocally pro-immigrant stance. They defined their immigration platform in opposition to the policies of former President Donald Trump’s first term—separating families detained at the border, a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries and efforts to gut the asylum system among them.

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US Presidential Election result will possibly take days to determine, given tight margins expected in seven swing states, reports stated. In US due to mail-in ballots and the time required to count all votes, a winner may not be declared for several days. It means necessarily a winner may not be announced on November 5.

This is due to the reason that mail-in ballots take longer to count, and different states have different procedures for processing these votes. Some key states only begin counting on Election Day, resulting in delays.