First Votes Cast on Election Day

More than 1.1 million Oregon voters had already cast their ballots heading into Election Day.

As of Nov. 4, the Oregon Secretary of State’s office shows that more than 46 percent of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters had returned their ballots.

Those numbers include 56.1 percent of the state’s 1 million registered Democrats, 60.6 percent of the almost 743,000 registered Republicans, and 28.4 percent received from 1.1 million nonaffiliated voters.

Podcaster Joe Rogan has formally endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the eve of Election Day.

In a Nov. 4 statement posted on X, accompanying a video of his interview with Elon Musk, Rogan said during the podcast the billionaire had made the “most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way.”

The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that Cobb County may not accept absentee ballots after Election Day, overturning a lower court decision that extended the ballot receipt deadline to Nov. 8 for over 3,000 voters who received late ballots.

However, any absentee ballots from the “Affected Voters”—as defined by a lower court order—that are received after the Election Day deadline but before 5 p.m. on Nov. 8 will be kept separate and secure, not counted, and not destroyed until further order of the court, per the order. The Cobb County Board of Elections has been ordered to notify the affected voters that they are now subject to the Nov. 5 deadline, which a lower court previously extended.

ATLANTA—Voters in Georgia have been inundated with appeals for their support—campaign rallies, texts, and calls encouraging them to donate to one candidate or the other, and perpetual advertisements—for months now.

Billboards, yard signs, and bumper stickers expressing support for one candidate or the other litter Buckhead, a neighborhood to the north of Atlanta’s city center.

Several Atlanta residents told The Epoch Times they’re sick of it, and look forward to the end of the election season.

News Analysis

The 2024 road to the White House has been riddled with more potholes, landmines, and detours than anyone could have imagined.

Amid a string of historic events, a few stand out as the most pivotal. The Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, faced multiple criminal and civil court cases, and survived two assassination attempts. His opponent for the majority of the two-year campaign, President Joe Biden, exited the race after a difficult debate; then the Democratic Party chose Vice President Kamala Harris as a last-minute replacement to oppose Trump.

Missouri state officials filed a lawsuit on Monday to prevent the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) from sending federal personnel to monitor polling places on Election Day.

The legal action, filed by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and the Missouri Attorney General’s office, seeks to block what Ashcroft describes as “illegal interference” by the federal government in Missouri’s elections.

PHILADELPHIA—A judge has denied Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s request to block the $1 million giveaway program that billionaire Elon Musk and America PAC have been operating in the lead-up to the Nov. 5 election.

Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Angelo Foglietta issued the denial after a Nov. 4 hearing that was prompted by Krasner’s civil lawsuit against Musk and America PAC.

Krasner had accused Musk and America PAC of running an illegal lottery, which he said created a public nuisance, and violating a state consumer protection law. The program is set to conclude on Election Day, Nov. 5.

Former President Donald Trump in a new interview did not rule out banning some vaccines if he wins the upcoming election.

Trump was referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer who founded the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense.

Former President Donald Trump said that if he gets a second term in the White House, he would impose a new 25 percent tariff on Mexico if it does not stem the flood of illegal immigrants into the United States.

“One of the first calls I’m going to make is to Mexico: ‘You stop letting people come in through our border,’” Trump told a rally on Monday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

After noting that Mexico recently elected a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said that he would “inform her on Day 1 or sooner that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25 percent tariff on everything they send into the United States of America.”

Voters were asked what the most important factor was in determining which candidate they’re voting for in the Nov. 5 election.

The most frequent answer was the economy. Overall, 21 percent of respondents chose the economy, including 35 percent of Republicans and people leaning Republican and 7 percent of Democrats and people leaning Democrat.

The judge issued the order on Friday afternoon, Nov. 1, in response to a complaint filed that morning by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on behalf of voters who requested emergency injunctive relief.

Eight-foot-high metal security fencing was installed around key government sites in Washington over the weekend as authorities brace for potential unrest on or after Election Day.

The fencing was erected around the White House, the Treasury Department building complex, adjacent parts of Lafayette Square, as well as outside of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue, where Vice President Kamala Harris resides.

At the U.S. Capitol, authorities surrounded the perimeter with bicycle rack barriers displaying signs reading, “Police Line: Do Not Cross.”

With the hours ticking down to the 2024 presidential election on Nov. 5, many voters on both sides of the political aisle worry about the outcome, they told Epoch Times reporters dispatched across the country.

It’s no wonder. It’s been a long—and unusually chaotic—election cycle.

After being beaten as the incumbent in 2020, former President Donald Trump announced his intention to run again in mid-November 2022, just shy of two years before Election Day 2024.

More than 82 million people voted early in the 2024 election, with the Republicans coming within 2 percentage points of Democrats for the early-vote total.

The majority, or 44.9 million, have voted early and in person, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab. Meanwhile, about 37.8 million have returned mail-in ballots.

In states reporting by party affiliation, registered Democrats are ahead of registered Republicans by about 800,000 votes, a much closer gap than in 2020, primarily because Republican voters have shown a higher likelihood of voting early this year.

In the run-up to Election Day, court battles have emerged over various policies related to ballots, election integrity, and vote-processing procedures.

Each case raises a typical judicial question of whether the policies align with state or federal law. A common issue in many of these cases is whether judges should exercise their discretion to uphold or invalidate policies so close to Nov. 5.

Cases in Georgia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi have each seen attorneys discussing something known as the Purcell principle, which is generally understood to caution against last-minute changes to election procedures. The exact contours of when and how that principle applies have been subject to debate.

The Supreme Court decided on Nov. 4 to hear a racial gerrymandering case from Louisiana.

Gerrymandering is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to favor a particular party or constituency.

The case will not be heard in time for the Nov. 5 presidential and congressional elections.

PITTSBURGH—On Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman killed 11 people and injured six others at the Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.

Less than five years later, the Hamas terrorist group launched in Israel the deadliest single-day anti-Semitic attack since the Holocaust.

More than six years after the synagogue shooting and a year after Hamas’s attack, the Jewish community in Squirrel Hill, where the synagogue is located, will head to the polls to vote in a key state amid a rise in anti-Semitism.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, will spend her final campaign day in Pennsylvania, holding three “Get Out The Vote” rallies in three different cities.

Pennsylvania is an important battleground for the Nov. 5 election, with 19 electoral votes—more than any other swing state. Whoever wins the Keystone State this year seems likely to be the next president of the United States, according to pollsters.

In the 2016 presidential election, candidate Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by a narrow margin of 0.7 points, securing a crucial victory in a state that had traditionally leaned Democratic. He lost the state to candidate Joe Biden four years later.

Early voting has exploded in popularity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but some voters still prefer to cast their ballots in person on Election Day.

For those preparing to join those lines, here are the answers to some common questions they might have.

When Is Election Day?

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.

Am I Eligible to Vote?

Only U.S. citizens ages 18 or older are permitted to vote in federal elections.

Additionally, all states and territories except North Dakota require voter registration.

NBC aired a message from former President Donald Trump one day after Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on Saturday Night Live (SNL).

Trump, after greeting fans of sports, noted that the presidential election is slated for Nov. 5.

WASHINGTON—Cities across the United States have seen buildings boarded up as voters prepare to cast their ballots in a highly contentious election.

On the weekend before the Nov. 5 election, buildings near the White House could be seen with wooden boards placed over their exteriors—including on a McDonald’s, Peet’s Coffee, and U.S. Post Office location.

Similar scenes have been reported in Portland, Boston, San Francisco, and New York City, serving as visible signs of caution as state and local governments discussed potential unrest.

Even though the presidential candidates haven’t discussed it much, school choice is an election year issue in many parts of the nation.

In Nebraska, voters will decide whether to repeal a 2023 law that funds private school tuition with taxpayer dollars, which has cost about $10 million. Referendum 435 notes the arguments for and against the current law.

BETHLEHEM, Pa.—With its 19 electoral votes dwarfing any other swing state, Pennsylvania is perhaps the most critical battleground in the fight for the Electoral College. Whoever wins the Keystone State this year appears likely to become the next president.

It’s part of the “blue wall”—which also includes Michigan and Wisconsin—that had voted for a Democratic candidate in every presidential election for 20 years before then-candidate Donald Trump snatched them in 2016. Trump lost all three to then-candidate Joe Biden four years later.

Pennsylvania’s industries, its population demographics, and its regional geography all make the state critical to win in the presidential election, political experts told The Epoch Times.

Pennsylvania’s top election official confirmed his office is investigating potentially fraudulent voter registration applications after authorities in multiple counties reported the issue.

Lancaster County officials set the problematic registrations aside and they were sent to local law enforcement, Schmidt said.

Health care access and affordability seem to have received limited attention during the 2024 presidential campaigns, despite the industry accounting for more than 17 percent of the United States’ GDP.

“For perhaps the first election season since 2004, health coverage policies have had a relatively low profile,” Sharon Glied, dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, wrote in an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine.

John C. Goodman, health economist and health policy expert, told The Epoch Times: “The two biggest problems in health care: Millions of people can’t afford the care they need, and millions of people don’t have access to the care they need. And neither candidate is addressing these two problems in any serious way.”

BETHLEHEM, Pa.—Nestled in the heart of eastern Pennsylvania is one of two state counties that have been bellwethers in the past four presidential elections and may decide who controls the White House next year.

Northampton County, home of the former Bethlehem Steel plant—once the world’s largest producer of steel—is one of two once-blue counties in the Keystone State, along with Erie County, that then-candidate Donald Trump flipped in 2016 before they moved back to the Democrats in 2020.

Now considered a swing county in the largest battleground state, Northampton is seeing significant attention this year. Democrats visited the county in September. Trump, now a former president and the Republican presidential nominee, has stopped repeatedly in the larger Lehigh Valley area. And House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has been to Bethlehem twice recently.

On paper, voters will be casting their ballots on Nov. 5 for just one presidential candidate and a handful of other candidates for federal office. Their choices, however, will ultimately bear on dozens of other powerful officials who aren’t on the ballot but can nonetheless determine the future course of the country.

Upon assuming the presidency next January, Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump will receive the power to nominate these individuals who could nevertheless rule against the policies they seek to implement.

Federal courts, which are established by Article III of the Constitution, often have the final say over whether the policies voters seek with their ballot can take effect.

Lower Courts

According to the Justice Department, the nation has 94 district or trial courts and more than 670 seats for district court judges. Above those courts are 13 appeals courts, which are divided into 12 federal circuits covering specified regions of the country and the 13th the Federal Circuit Court that only hears specialized cases.