Dixville Notch splits presidential vote 3-3 in first Election Day vote

Associated Press New Hampshire: In a presidential election that couldn't be closer, it seemed fitting that the first votes cast on Election Day were evenly split, with three for Donald Trump and three for Kamala Harris. The tiny New Hampshire resort town Dixville Notch has a tradition that dates back to 1960 for being the first in the nation to complete in-person voting. After a rousing accordion version of the national anthem, the town's six voters began casting their ballots at the stroke of midnight and the vote count was complete 15 minutes later.

Final day of voting in US is here, after millions already cast their ballots Election Day 2024 arrived on Tuesday with tens of millions of Americans having already cast their ballots. Those include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner. The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust over 4 million voters that a top official in the secretary of state's office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls. As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That's driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats' longstanding advantage in the early vote.

Despite long lines in some places and a few hiccups that are common to all elections, early inperson and mail voting proceeded without any major problems. That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads.