Sto­ry by ALI SWEN­SON, CHRISTI­NA A. CAS­SIDY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Elec­tion Day vot­ing un­fold­ed large­ly smooth­ly across the na­tion Tues­day but with scat­tered re­ports of ex­treme weath­er, bal­lot print­ing er­rors and tech­ni­cal prob­lems caus­ing de­lays.

Most of the hic­cups oc­cur­ring by mid-day were “large­ly ex­pect­ed rou­tine and planned-for events,” said Cait Con­ley, se­nior ad­vis­er to the di­rec­tor of the Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and In­fra­struc­ture Se­cu­ri­ty Agency, in a press brief­ing. She said the agency was not cur­rent­ly track­ing any na­tion­al, sig­nif­i­cant in­ci­dents im­pact­ing elec­tion se­cu­ri­ty.

Help­ing vot­ing run rel­a­tive­ly smooth­ly on Elec­tion Day was the fact that tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans had al­ready cast their bal­lots. Those in­clud­ed record num­bers of vot­ers in Geor­gia, North Car­oli­na and oth­er bat­tle­ground states that could de­cide the win­ner. —(AP)

Here are oth­er trend­ing sto­ries on the U.S. Elec­tion from THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Af­ter soft­ware prob­lems, vot­ing hours will be ex­tend­ed in a Penn­syl­va­nia coun­ty

By BRUCE SHIP­KOWS­KI

A Penn­syl­va­nia state judge on Tues­day or­dered polls to re­main open for two ex­tra hours in Cam­bria Coun­ty, which sought the ex­ten­sion af­ter a soft­ware mal­func­tion af­fect­ed bal­lot-scan­ning ma­chines.

Coun­ty of­fi­cials said the prob­lem caused some vot­er con­fu­sion, with some leav­ing with­out cast­ing a bal­lot, as well as long lines at some lo­ca­tions. They stressed, along with state of­fi­cials, that no one was be­ing turned away from the polls and all bal­lots would be count­ed.

Po­lice have ar­rest­ed a man try­ing to en­ter the US Capi­tol with a torch and flare gun

By MIKE BAL­SAMO

U.S. Capi­tol Po­lice say the man was stopped Tues­day dur­ing a se­cu­ri­ty screen­ing at the Capi­tol Vis­i­tor Cen­ter. Au­thor­i­ties say he smelled of fu­el and was car­ry­ing the flare gun and torch.

Of­fi­cials have can­celled pub­lic tours of the Capi­tol for the re­main­der of the day.

Po­lice say they are still in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

The ar­rest comes as au­thor­i­ties are on height­ened alert for se­cu­ri­ty is­sues around the na­tion’s cap­i­tal and have in­creased pa­trols in ar­eas down­town and near the White House around Elec­tion Day. Near­ly four years ago, a mob of Don­ald Trump’s sup­port­ers at­tacked the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Man ar­rest­ed in up­state New York af­ter threat­en­ing to burn down a polling site

By KAREN MATTHEWS

The man went to vote in the town of Fowler near the Cana­di­an bor­der at about 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 that 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.

Har­ris look­ing for­ward to an elec­tion night par­ty at her al­ma mater

By AAMER MAD­HANI

“The first of­fice I ever ran for was fresh­man class rep­re­sen­ta­tive at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty,” Har­ris re­called in her Tues­day in­ter­view with the Big Tig­ger Morn­ing Show on V-103 in At­lanta.

“And to go back tonight to Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, my beloved al­ma mater, and be able to hope­ful­ly … rec­og­nize this day for what it is — re­al­ly, it’s full cir­cle for me.”

Howard, lo­cat­ed in the na­tion’s cap­i­tal, is part of a net­work of his­tor­i­cal­ly Black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties found­ed be­fore 1964 for African Amer­i­can stu­dents.

If she wins, Har­ris will be the first HBCU alum to serve as pres­i­dent.

Trump is sug­gest­ing he won’t chal­lenge the re­sults of the elec­tion — as long as it’s fair

By ADRI­ANA GÓMEZ LICÓN

“If it’s a fair elec­tion, I’d be the first one to ac­knowl­edge,” the re­sults, Trump said, though what meets that de­f­i­n­i­tion wasn’t clear.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter vot­ing in Flori­da, Trump said that he had no plans to tell his sup­port­ers to re­frain from vi­o­lence should he lose.

“I don’t have to tell them, be­cause they are not vi­o­lent peo­ple,” he said.

Trump planned to vis­it a near­by cam­paign of­fice to thank those work­ing on his be­half.

Trump says pa­per bal­lots and 1-day vot­ing should be the norm

By ADRI­ANA GOMEZ LI­CON

“I’m hear­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia they won’t have an an­swer ‘til two or three days from now,” Trump said. “I think it’s an ab­solute out­rage if that’s the case.”

Trump says he will have “a very spe­cial group of peo­ple” at Mar-a-La­go and a few thou­sand peo­ple at a near­by con­ven­tion cen­tre to watch the elec­tion re­sults.

“It looks like we have a very sub­stan­tial lead,” he said with­out elab­o­rat­ing on whether he has a plan on when to de­clare vic­to­ry.

Biden is lay­ing low at the White House on Elec­tion Day

By AAMER MAD­HANI

Joe Biden has no pub­lic ap­pear­ances on his sched­ule and his press sec­re­tary, Karine Jean-Pierre, won’t be hold­ing her typ­i­cal dai­ly brief­ing on Tues­day.

Biden made his fi­nal cam­paign ap­pear­ance on Sat­ur­day when he de­liv­ered a speech to labour­ers on be­half of the Har­ris-Walz cam­paign in Scran­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia.

He hasn’t tak­en a ques­tion from re­porters since gag­gling at an event in Bal­ti­more last Tues­day. Lat­er that same day, Biden cre­at­ed an up­roar in re­marks to Lati­no ac­tivists when he re­spond­ed to racist com­ments at a Trump ral­ly made by the co­me­di­an Tony Hinch­cliffe, who re­ferred to the U.S.’ is­land ter­ri­to­ry of Puer­to Ri­co as a “float­ing is­land of garbage.”

Biden, ac­cord­ing to a tran­script pre­pared by the of­fi­cial White House stenog­ra­phers, told the Lati­no group on a Tues­day evening video call, “The on­ly garbage I see float­ing out there is his sup­port­ers — his — his de­mo­niza­tion of Lati­nos is un­con­scionable, and it’s un-Amer­i­can.”

The tran­script re­leased by the White House press of­fice, how­ev­er, ren­dered the quote with an apos­tro­phe, read­ing “sup­port­er’s” rather than “sup­port­ers,” which aides said point­ed to Biden crit­i­ciz­ing Hinch­cliffe, not the mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who are sup­port­ing Trump for pres­i­dent.