US Presidential Election: Joe Biden Campaigns For Votes Again In Pennsylvania

Voters in the U.S. today determine who will move into the White House or who will stay there for the next four years.

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Live-Ticker

1:58 pm – Joe Biden is campaigning in Pennsylvania again for votes

Election day announced Trump-Herausforderer Joe Biden in his hometown in beleaguered Pennsylvania for a final vote. The 77-year-old travels to Scranton, his wife Jill Biden wants to mobilize voters again in Florida, which is also important. Biden’s vice presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, is traveling to Detroit, Michigan, meanwhile. PResident Donald Trump after the last five appearances on Monday, he has no more date for the election.

12:55 pm – The first polling stations open in the eastern United States

Polling stations have opened in several states on the East Coast of the United States. At 6 a.m. local time (12 p.m. CET), many personal voting locations were opened in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, Indiana, and Kentucky. Long lines formed in front of some. Because the United States spans multiple time zones, polling stations are open for several hours. To the east, follow the states in the center of the country. In the west coast state of California, polling stations open at 7 am local time (4 pm CET). Hawaii and Alaska are at the bottom of the league: Voters can cast their ballots here from 18 CET Tuesday to 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, and in the Aleutian archipelago one more hour.

12:20 pm – What else is elected besides the president?

Today not only will the president of the United States be elected, but also the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and the 35 seats in the Senate (33 regular seats and 2 by-elections) are available. Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections and now have 235 seats, Republicans 199. Democrats are unlikely to lose their leadership there. Instead, in the Senate, where Republicans have to defend their majority. In the 100-member chamber, one-third of the Senate is renewed every two years. Republicans, who currently have 53 seats, have 23 seats to defend, while Democrats only have 12 seats to choose from. A clear defeat for Trump could also mean the loss of the Small House for his party.

11:30 am – How does the voting system work?

Voters in the United States elect their president. But they don’t do it directly. They vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, but the so-called voters are elected. These, a total of 538 men and women, do not elect the president until a few weeks later. the System of «Electoral College» called and comes from the time of the founding of the United States. This video explains exactly how it works in detail.

11:00 am – When can the first results be expected?

the opening hours polling stations differ from state to state. Many states open their so-called “polling places” on Tuesday morning between 6 am and 7 am, the Closing generally takes place between 19 and 21 Clock in the afternoon (local time). Since the US covers multiple time zones, the closure of polling stations in the respective states is a long way off.

the Counting the votes it begins only after polling stations close. More and more votes are being cast before Election Day: so-called “early voting” is now possible in 36 states and Washington DC without giving reasons.

Votes cast in advance will be counted along with the ballot papers submitted on Election Day. Digital voting machines or special ballots are used in most electoral districts. The latter are also scanned in order to count and digitize.

Already before Election Day, nearly 99.7 million citizens had voted by letter or in polling stations that had been opened in advance, according to data from the US Electoral Project. This corresponded to about 70 percent of the votes. cast in the 2016 presidential election.

10:38 am – The first polling stations are open

At midnight (local time) on the dot, US Election Day.It started in the state of New Hampshire. The first result comes from the town of Dixville Notch, which has always voted at the beginning of “witch hour” since 1960. There are fewer than a dozen registered voters here, so the count is done immediately after the vote. Joe Biden received all five votes cast. Also in the small town of Millsfield, people traditionally vote at midnight. At Hart’s Location, the midnight vote for this presidential election is canceled due to the corona pandemic. Here, as elsewhere, polling stations don’t open until a few hours later.

The fact that you can vote so early is thanks to a law in New Hampshire. It allows municipalities with less than 100 inhabitants to open their polling stations from midnight, both in the primaries and in the presidential elections. This was to give railroad workers a chance to vote, lie to each other, and then get to work on time. The small town results did not always reflect who eventually became president.

10:30 am – let’s go!

Good afternoon dear readers. What you see here on your smartphone or desktop is that Start of our live ticker for the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. In the next 24 hours, at least, we will report live from the NZZ newsroom in Zurich about the elections ennet the big pond. We deliver results, the latest developments, and squint at America, where our US correspondents are on the road and give us their impressions on the site.

With agency material