ELECTION DAY

Ohio voters have rejected a proposal that would've made it more difficult for voters to amend the state constitution, including one measure set for the November ballot that would guarantee abortion rights in the state.

After years of criticizing mail voting and so-called ballot harvesting as ripe for fraud, Republicans at the top of the party want to change course.

Early voting for Jacksonville elections came to a close Sunday evening.

It is the final weekend to early vote in Duval before election day on Tuesday.

Post an Election Day pic or video on SnapJAX in the Election Day channel.

Poll workers were busy at the election center Monday, setting up for voters to elect the next mayor and city council members in Jacksonville. Early voting brought in about 13.8% of registered voters in Duval County.

It appears voter turnout for the Jacksonville city election is going to be low. As of Friday, early voting and mail-in voting stands at 11%.

Keeping an eye on a possible storm system for Election Day

Tuesday makes one week from Election Day on March 21 as early voting is underway, and according to election officials, voting has been unexpectedly low.

After disappointing results in this year's elections, Republicans are reevaluating their antipathy to mail voting.

It's that time of year again, when Congress tends to rush to fund the government. This year, two major spending bills are hitting snags with the clock ticking.

Nonprofit organizations in Georgia are digging deep to ramp up their operations again after Election Day to inform voters about the closely watched runoff race for one of the state's Senate seats.

Georgia voters have cast more than 1 million ballots ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

Fears of aggressive poll watchers sowing chaos at polling stations or conservative groups trying to intimidate votes didn't materialize on Election Day as many election officials and voting rights experts had feared.

Lengthy vote counts in states such as Arizona or California can frustrate candidates and their supporters, but they don't indicate anything is wrong with the voting or the tallying of ballots.

The two Republicans who control the elected board in a rural Arizona county have sued their own election director to force her to conduct a greatly expanded hand-count of ballots cast in the Nov. 8 election.

The nation is watching to see if former President Donald Trump will announce a 2024 run for president during a speech planned for Tuesday night.

The Associated Press called the Arizona governor’s race for Democrat Katie Hobbs on Monday after the latest round of vote releases gave her a lead that the AP determined she would not relinquish.

The Supreme Court has again declined to hear a lawsuit involving a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, the gun attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.

There was no violence in the midterm elections last week, and many election deniers lost and quietly conceded.

Republicans' wait for a majority in the U.S. House dragged into another day Tuesday.

The Associated Press has not yet called the governor's race in Arizona between Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Republican former TV broadcaster Kari Lake.

Blake Masters wasn’t posting the numbers of votes he needed in Election Day ballots as they were counted and released days later by officials in Arizona’s biggest county.

The board of supervisors in a southern Arizona county will meet next week to consider counting nearly all the ballots cast in-person on Election Day.

Polls closed three days ago in Arizona, but counting votes for the 2022 midterm elections continued into the weekend.

Two days after the midterm elections, misinformation about the results remains focused on Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Democrats are holding on to narrow leads in key Arizona contests, but the races for U.S. Senate and governor are still too early to call.

A day after the midterm elections, misinformation about the results is zeroing in on the states of Arizona and Pennsylvania.

No digital intrusions are known to have affected the counting of the midterm vote.

Hundreds of thousands of votes are still being tallied in Arizona, where contested races including Senate and gubernatorial contests remained undeclared.

Neither party has reached the necessary threshold to win control in the House or Senate as of early Friday.

Republican congressional candidates largely won the night Tuesday, with victories up and down the state, according to unofficial results posted on the Florida Division of Elections website.

In case you’ve been living under a rock these last few weeks, today is election day!

It’s been a breezy start to the week and a few showers streaming in from the Atlantic. A few showers will remain possible tonight, with the highest chance south of Jacksonville. Morning lows will be in the upper 60s.

Voters in the U.S. who go on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook or other platforms to learn about Tuesday’s pivotal midterm elections are likely to encounter rumors, hearsay and misinformation.

If you’re tuning in now to Election Day in the U.S., voting in the midterm election ends when polls close on Tuesday.

Nearly 4.8 million people have already voted in Florida’s election and early numbers indicate Republicans could have a huge advantage once voting ends.

Although thousands hit the polls for early voting — many will still head to the polls on Tuesday to vote in person

Election officials in some Florida counties are urging people to vote early where possible as potentially severe weather threatens the state on Election Day.

As of Saturday morning, Georgia’s record-breaking early turnout concluded with 2,288,889 voters casting their ballot during Early Voting, according to state elections officials.

Early voting across the state is wrapping up this weekend as Florida candidates gear up for Election Day on Tuesday.

County-by-county information about how and where to vote early in the Nov. 8 midterm election.

County-by-county information about how and where to vote early in the Nov. 8 midterm election.

When is early voting over in the midterm elections.

Much of the focus has shifted to the Senate, specifically a few select races that will decide control.

Republican election officials around New York refused to process absentee ballots amid a court challenge earlier this week.

Why has The Associated Press tallied votes and declared winners in U.S. elections since the middle of the 19th century.

It’s the night of the election and polls have been closed for hours.

It’s 15 days until Election Day but already many voters are making their voices heard. Early voting is now underway in Duval County and several others in Northeast Florida.

Early voting in the Nov. 8 general election starts Monday in Jacksonville as well as Alachua, Bradford, Flagler and Putnam counties.

Republican activists who believe the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump have crafted a plan that, in their telling, will thwart cheating in this year’s midterm elections.

Voting could feel different in this year's midterms, as the election falsehoods told by former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters have created a ripple effect across the country.

New voters have until Tuesday, October 11 to register to vote so they are eligible to cast a ballot in the Nov. 8 midterm election.

Here’s an overview of where things stand in the Senate and House of Representatives with the election more than a month away.

A rural county in Nevada where conspiracy theories about voting machines run deep is planning to start hand-counting its mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day, but the process risks public release of early voting results.

In-person voting for the midterm elections has started in Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming, in a landscape that has changed since the pandemic drove a shift to mail balloting in the 2020 presidential contest.

As Election Day approaches, the fight over mail-in ballots is back.

A steady stream of voters could be seen on Tuesday going to cast their ballot at voting locations across the Northeast Florida area in Florida’s primary election.

Ware County is one of the areas in Georgia affected by a poll worker shortage. The county is down about 30 poll workers, and the Supervisor of Elections believes it's because people are being shamed out of the position.

The Flagler County Elections Office needs poll workers for the upcoming elections.

Counting of mailed ballots in Pennsylvania is drawing renewed scrutiny amid a too-close-to-call U.S. Senate primary between Republicans David McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Former President Donald Trump blasted the state’s elections procedures on social media, even though there are no indications of any wrongdoing with those ballots other than a printing error that was slowing the tally in one county.

A federal judge has ruled that a former Kentucky clerk violated the constitutional rights of two same-sex couples, who were among those to whom she wouldn’t issue marriage licenses.

Election Day is Tuesday in Jacksonville.

A federal judge has rejected motions to dismiss eight lawsuits that challenge Georgia’s sweeping new election law.

For those who enjoyed a break from political ads for a little while, get used to them ramping up again after the holiday season, if not sooner.

A year after the NCAA gave athletes Election Day off, football teams all over the country were back practicing on the first Tuesday in November.

Forty-six candidates are on the ballot to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom in Tuesday’s recall election.

A new report shows fewer than one-third of voters who cast ballots in last year’s U.S. presidential election did so at a polling place on Election Day as the coronavirus pandemic led states to greatly expand mail-in balloting and early voting.

As Republicans roll back access to the ballot, Democrats in certain states have been quietly moving to expand voting rights.

More than 111 million Americans voted before Election Day in 2020.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has sided with Democrats and ruled that the state elections commission should not remove from the rolls voters flagged as possibly having moved, something conservatives have wanted done for nearly two years.

Does Georgia’s Republican-sponsored election bill make the state’s voting process more secure, or is an attempt, as some Democrats claim, to suppress votes during an election?

Maintaining accurate voter rolls is a bipartisan concern, but there is little agreement on the best way to do it. Republicans say Democrats are too lax, resulting in bloated voter rolls that undermine confidence and invite fraud. Here is an explanation of how voter rolls are maintained, how states do it differently and the conflicts over this year’s legislative proposals. WHAT ARE VOTER ROLLS AND HOW ARE THEY MAINTAINED? In 2016, New York City’s Board of Elections improperly removed more than 200,000 names from the voter rolls.

AdThe proposed voting changes, which come after millions of voters in Florida and throughout the country opted to cast mail-in ballots amid the COVID-19 pandemic, are causing alarm for elections experts as well as Democrats. Election supervisors in Florida also encouraged the use of mail-in ballots in advance of the November election, and the numbers of mail-in ballots skyrocketed. The measure would require voters to request mail-in ballots prior to every general election. AdTrump has frequently voted by mail, but the former president and his allies have asserted that mail-in ballots are vulnerable to fraud. Ingoglia defended the provision in the Senate proposal that would require voters to sign up for mail-in ballots more frequently.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A state senator is seeking to expand a scholarship program set up more than 25 years ago because of a massacre in Rosewood to include people whose families were directly affected by the racially motivated 1920 Ocoee Election Day riot in Central Florida. Black residents were killed in the riot, and others fled the community as homes, churches and a fraternal lodge were destroyed. “I’m not under the illusion that people will think this is not enough,” Bracy said. Last year, Bracy led a successful effort to require public-school students learn about the Ocoee riot, similar to a requirement for teaching about the Holocaust. AdWhen he initially proposed the 2020 legislation, Bracy sought $150,000 per Ocoee victim, a funding level modeled, in part, on a 1994 decision by the Legislature to compensate African-American families because of the Rosewood Massacre.

Trends and opinions among Georgia voters appear to be shifting since the November election, according to AP VoteCast, which surveys thousands of voters in the state before the presidential race and during the Senate runoffs. One question asked voters whether they believed the country was heading in the right direction. Looking at attitudes toward President Trump among voters choosing Republicans: In the November election, 89% of Perdue’s voters said they had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of the president, in the AP VoteCast survey. Compare that to the results of the AP VoteCast survey for the runoff: Among Perdue voters, views of the president remained similar, with 87% favorable to 12% unfavorable. But I would expect there will be a large chunk of voters who will step away after what they witnessed this week.”

The Nevada Supreme Court made Joe Biden's win in the state official on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020, approving the final canvass of the Nov. 3 election. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)LAS VEGAS – The Nevada Supreme Court made Joe Biden’s win in the state official on Tuesday, approving the state's final canvass of the Nov. 3 election. Biden got 50.06% of the vote and Trump 47.67%. Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican who has avoided the public eye in recent weeks, presented the results to the court. Jesse Binnall, an attorney for the Trump campaign who is handling an election challenge pending before a state court judge, said Tuesday he intends to prove that so many fraudulent votes were cast statewide that Trump won Nevada.

After months of travel to battleground states before Election Day, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency now is looking at taxpayer-funded trips abroad, including the tropics, in the Trump administration's last weeks. Administrator Andrew Wheeler had been invited next month to Taiwan, a trip with an estimated cost of $45,000, EPA spokesman James Hewitt said Thursday. “Administrator Wheeler remains head of the agency and will continue to advance environmental progress both here and abroad,” Hewitt said. The New York Times, which first reported Wheeler’s travel plans, said Wheeler and other EPA officials were expected to travel by chartered flight to minimize exposure to the coronavirus. Hewitt, the EPA spokesman, did not immediately respond to a question asking whether Wheeler was doing any planning to help the agency transition from one administration to the next.

Native Americans were among the difference-makers who swung the race to Biden in Arizona. That show of force is now translating into leverage for Native Americans seeking more representation in top levels of the federal government. Native voters say they were motivated by many of the same things as other voters. She also was part of a group helping to boost voting among Native Americans. “People need to start paying attention to not only Navajo votes but across the board nationally, Native votes,” Davis said.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, file photo, poll workers assist a voter on Election Day at Frank McCourt High School, on New York's Upper West Side. Poll workers in some states who came in contact with voters on Election Day are now reporting they have tested positive for the coronavirus despite painstaking efforts to secure election sites. In most places, poll workers were required to wear masks. The cases emerged while election workers continued counting thousands of ballots. It's difficult to trace cases back to polling places because the virus manifests in different ways, and some people never get symptoms.

“There’s a way that we can rein all this in,” said Dr. Lynda Ulrich. Her advice about breaking the grip of post-election stress syndrome deals with focusing on some positives. She said that happens after you acknowledge those political ads are like the rest of marketing. “And then it doesn’t really matter which side of the political equation you’re on. Ulrich explained her four shifts needed to end the election stress for you:

But the election was largely smooth, in large part because 107 million voters that cast their ballots early and took the pressure off Election Day operations. Election experts said the large increase in advance voting — 107 million people voting early in person and by mail — helped take pressure off Election Day operations. Among the many lawsuits filed since Election Day is one in Nevada by the Trump campaign alleging voter fraud. “On Election Day, we didn’t have any reports of anything significant," said Lisa Schaefer, who leads the bipartisan County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. “The system held up given the extraordinary circumstances that election officials faced,” said Amber McReynolds, who leads the National Vote at Home Institute.

As election officials in states across the country continue releasing vote totals for the presidential election, some claim that ballots counted after Election Day must be illegal. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump said during a briefing at the White House on Thursday. CLAIM: Votes counted after Tuesday are illegal because they did not reach election offices by Election Day and the counting underway right now is not what’s usually expected at this point during an election. THE FACTS: The Trust Index team at our sister station in Orlando verified that election laws in many states allow votes to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive later. After reviewing the facts, the Trust Index team has determined that votes being counted after Election Day are legal, as long as state laws are being followed.

"I really believe that’s why they did the mail-in ballots where there’s tremendous corruption and fraud going on. Experts and officials predicted that the record number of mail ballots — 65 million, double that of 2016 — would inevitably result in delays. That’s because mail ballots take more time to process and verify than those cast in person. And in some states — including Michigan and Pennsylvania — it’s against the law to count those ballots before Election Day. After all, the president repeatedly and publicly undermined the legitimacy of mail ballots, making it less likely for his supporters to vote by mail.

Here, Christina A. Cassidy, a reporter for The Associated Press who covers voting and election security, offers some insight into the post-election process for fixing ballots:UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES CAN A BALLOT BE CURED? In states that lack such a process, ballots with these problems are generally not counted. But a few states do not use signature verification to validate a mail ballot, including Pennsylvania. In a few states, if the problem is identified before Election Day, the voter is sent a replacement ballot. Partisan poll watchers can report concerns to party officials, who can raise objections and file lawsuits.

ATLANTA – Democrat Joe Biden took a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in the battleground state of Georgia early Friday morning. State officials couldn’t immediately provide the number of uncured absentee ballots. Provisional lists are kept at the county level, and there are thousands outstanding statewide that county officials will decide on whether to count by Friday. Donald Trump Jr. spoke Thursday evening at an event in Atlanta, along with several Georgia elected officials and decried the process. Meanwhile, outside the State Farm Arena where the final Georgia votes are being counted, we have a growing crowd.

WASHINGTON – Democrat Joe Biden stood on the cusp of winning the presidency Friday night, three days after Election Day, as the long, exacting work of counting votes widened his lead over President Donald Trump in critical battleground states. There was intense focus on Pennsylvania, where Biden led Trump by more than 27,000 votes, and Nevada, where the Democrat led by about 22,000. In Pennsylvania, officials were not allowed to begin processing mail-in ballots until Election Day under state law. In Nevada, there were a number of provisional ballots cast by voters who registered on Election Day, and officials had to verify their eligibility. The AP has declared Biden the winner in Arizona and said Thursday that it was monitoring the vote count as it proceeded.

And he had demanded in advance that the results be known on Election Day, which is never a given. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell waited until Friday morning to tweet that “Every legal vote should be counted. All sides must get to observe the process.”Whether that dynamic will continue if fuller election results deliver the presidency to Biden is another key unanswered question. If the vote count goes against him, does he really want to be remembered as the president who burned down the building on his way out the door? ___EDITOR’S NOTE -- Nancy Benac is White House news editor and has covered government and politics for The Associated Press for four decades.

The image Eric Trump shared in his post claimed that there was a huge, inexplicable increase in voter turnout in Wisconsin this year. The image showed voter turnout percentages during presidential elections over the last 20 years in Wisconsin, with voter turnout hitting 89.25% this year. The Wisconsin Elections Commission calculates voter turnout based on the entire voting-age population, not just registered voters. But as of 7 p.m. on Sunday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported 3,684,726 registered voters. The Wisconsin Elections Commission received “a lot of calls” about the false rumors, said the state's top elections official Meagan Wolfe.

Karen Mahabir, fact check and misinformation editor for The Associated Press, says her team of reporters has had no shortage of work since Americans stopped voting late Tuesday. Here, she answers three quick questions about the misinformation landscape at the moment. We know they stepped up all their efforts to curb misinformation, which seems to be working for the most part. They're taking action. ___SOME RECENT AP STORIES ABOUT MISINFORMATION:— Claim that Sharpie pens ruin Arizona ballots misses the mark— Trump and allies spread falsehoods to cast doubt on election— Did social media actually counter election misinformation?

WASHINGTON – Two days after Election Day, protests across the United States are scattered, happening in places from Portland, Oregon and Seattle to Washington, D.C. Similar protests — sometimes about the election, sometimes about racial inequality — took place in at least a half-dozen cities, including Los Angeles, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and San Diego. In Portland, demonstrators engaged in what authorities said was widespread violence downtown. Here, Elizabeth Kennedy, deputy Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press, who is leading coverage of election-related protests, breaks down what AP journalists across the United States have been encountering. There was no widespread violence at the polls or in the immediate aftermath.

FILE - In this Nov. 3, 2020, file photo, a long line of people waiting to vote stretches around City Hall on Election Day, in Honolulu. Overall, the state’s vote-by-mail election appears to have been a big success, leading to record numbers of voters participating. The law also gives voters the option to vote in person at voter service centers, where people may also register to vote or get help with casting a ballot. Ma said people waited between two to four hours on Tuesday at the two voter centers on Oahu, an island with about 549,000 registered voters. Another factor was people who view voting in person on Election Day as sacrosanct and something they wanted to do.

With the race unsettled in several key battlegrounds, Trump's strong Election Day surge may not be enough to overcome a Democratic operation that also turned out its vote. But the tight presidential races and unexpected Democratic losses in congressional races demonstrated the resilient power of Trump’s appeal with rural, white voters and a growing polarization that may outlast his leadership. “But in this election we found it’s not ticking fast enough for the Democrats.”Even as the winner of the White House was unclear, Republicans had victories to celebrate Wednesday and white, rural voters to thank. Trump held one of his final, largest campaign rallies in Butler, drawing an estimated 54,000 people two days before Election Day. State Republicans spent months signing up new GOP registrants in the county — the GOP netted 11,000 voters over Democrats since Trump's 2016 election.

Meanwhile, outside the State Farm Arena where the final Georgia votes are being counted, we have a growing crowd. At stake in Georgia are 16 electoral votes. The lawsuit alleges that a Republican observer watched a poll worker take unprocessed absentee ballots from a back room and mix them into processed absentee ballots waiting to be tabulated. In Georgia, ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day in order to count. In the race to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, Democrat Joe Biden currently has 264 while Trump has 214.

Postal Service inspectors found just 13 ballots — all in Pennsylvania — during an Election Day sweep of mail processing centers ordered by a federal judge. The ballots were found in two separate mail processing facilities and were expedited for delivery to local election offices, according to court records filed Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington, D.C., had given the Postal Service until Tuesday afternoon to search 27 facilities in several battleground areas for outstanding ballots and immediately deliver any ballots discovered to election offices. Justice Department attorneys representing the Postal Service said they could not meet the judge's order without disrupting the agency's own Election Day operations. Instead, they are expedited directly to the boards of elections,” Postal Service spokesman Dave Partenheimer said.

4:36 a.m.Former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump are in a dead heat in the race for Georgia. Currently, former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by just 11,438 votes statewide. The latest counts gives Trump’s Democratic challenger Joe Biden a small lead, but the race is still too early to call. The electoral vote has former vice president Joe Biden in front of President Donald Trump, 238-213, at this point. Mullaney adds an update on Wisconsin that helps out former vice president Joe Biden in the race for the White House.

Unlike in previous years, states were contending with an avalanche of mail ballots driven by the global pandemic. Every election, what’s reported on election night are unofficial results, and the counting of votes extends past Election Day. This year, with so many mail ballots and close races in key states, counting every vote was expected to take more time. “These ballots were cast by tens of thousands of Michigan citizens who have the right to have their vote counted. Slowing the process down was the fact that local election officials could not begin processing and scanning ballots ahead of Election Day, as most states did.

There’s no doubt that Election Day this year was one for the books. After record-setting early voting, people still showed up in droves on Election Day to cast their ballot. Below are 10 photos -- all from Getty Images -- that give an indication of how different this Election Day looked. (2020 Getty Images)Protesters march through the streets around Black Lives Matter Plaza on Nov. 3 in Washington DC. (2020 Getty Images)Did you feel things were different this year?

WASHINGTON – America woke up Wednesday morning without a winner of the presidential election. There are also roughly 20 states that allow ballots received after Election Day to be counted if they were postmarked by the day of the election. Some states, including Florida, began counting absentee ballots days before Election Day — and had definitive results within hours of the polls closing. And they will prevail.”Vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end. ___Eds: Story has been updated to correct that 2000 Supreme Court decision came more than a month after Election Day, not more than two months