After an eventful and often volatile 2024 United States presidential election campaign, many expected voting day to be no different.
With concerns over possible civil unrest,.
Common Cause, a non-partisan watchdog group monitoring US elections, said voting ran “relatively smoothly” — but that doesn’t mean election day was devoid of drama.
Here’s a snapshot of what unfolded.
Battleground states hit by Russia-linked bomb threats
Voting in five of the seven was marred by dozens of bomb threats, which officials have linked to Russia.
Authorities confirmed threats were made on Tuesday to polling places in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Voting hours were extended at some locations as a result.
“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” the FBI said in a statement, adding election integrity was among its “highest priorities”.
“We will continue to work closely with our state and local law enforcement partners to respond to any threats to our elections and to protect our communities as Americans exercise their right to vote.”
The Russian embassy in Washington said any accusations Russia was interfering in the election were “malicious slander”.
“Russia has not interfered and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, including the United States,” it said in a statement.
“As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed, we respect the will of the American people.”
Officials reject Trump’s claims of voter fraud in key states
Before polls closed, Trump claimed on his Truth Social site without evidence that there was “a lot of talk about massive cheating” in Philadelphia, a city in key swing state Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia city commissioner Omar Sabir rejected Trump’s claims.
“To be clear, Philadelphia elections are safe, simple, secure and they have always been,” he said.
“There is no cheating, there is no smoke to it. People say things, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it is true. We learned this in 2020.
“We have hardworking people trying to give the citizens of America the elections they deserve.”
Trump made false claims in 2020 that fraud had occurred in large, Democratic-dominated cities.
In a subsequent Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump also asserted without evidence there was fraud in Detroit, the capital of Michigan, another battleground state.
“I don’t respond to nonsense,” Detroit city clerk Janice Winfrey told Reuters.
Thousands of ballots recounted in Milwaukee ‘out of abundance of caution’
Around 30,000 absentee ballots are being recounted in Milwaukee due to a “sealing error”, potentially delaying the confirmation of results by hours.
The city is in the battleground state of Wisconsin — one of.
Milwaukee’s election commission said the error was caused by doors on the tabulation machines not being properly closed.
“It’s [the re-count] just out of an abundance of caution,” city spokesman Jeff Fleming said.
“We have no reason to believe that there was any compromise to any of the machines.”
The Republican National Committee described the incident as “an unacceptable example of incompetent election administration,” saying “voters deserve better”.
The decision to recount the votes was made in consultation with Republicans and Democrats, the election commission said.
Voter machine malfunction in Iowa
Ballots are having to be counted by hand at a county in Iowa due to a voting machine malfunction.
Officials said voting machine issues had been reported at around 12 of the 45 polling places in Story County, which is home to around 100,000 people.
“The auditor is working with the vendor and our office to resolve it,” the Iowa secretary of state’s office said, adding it could impact how quickly results could be reported.
Recent polling showed Kamala Harris had a surprise 3 percentage point lead over Donald Trump in Iowa, which typically votes Republican.
Trump disputed the results of the poll, which came from widely respected organisation Selzer, saying the race was “not even close”.
Additional reporting by the Reuters news agency.
