US elections: Voting begins in several key states as closely contested campaign ends
Among the places where polling began were Georgia, Michigan and Arizona – states that have earlier witnessed close contests and may be crucial for the outcome.
The polling process for the United States presidential election has begun in at least 30 of the country’s 50 states, the BBC reported on Tuesday.
The elections will decide whether Democrat leader and Vice-President Kamala Harris will become the next United States president, or whether Republican leader Donald Trump will return to the post for another term.
Voting has begun in several swing states such as Georgia, Michigan and Arizona – states that have in the past witnessed close contests and may be crucial in deciding the outcome of the election.
Harris, at the close of the election campaign, said that voters had the opportunity “to finally turn the page on a decade of politics that has been driven by fear and division”, CNN reported.
Trump, on the other hand, reiterated his promise to crack down on undocumented immigration and alleged that the last four years under President Joe Biden and Harris “delivered nothing but economic hell for the American workers”.
About 240 million citizens are eligible to vote in the United States presidential election. These votes determine the electoral college in each state. A candidate needs to win at least 270 out of 538 electoral college votes in order to be elected as the president.
On July 22, Biden dropped out of the race for re-election and endorsed Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Several senior Democrat leaders had urged the 81-year-old to quit the race for re-election, expressing concerns about his age and health.
Trump, who was the president between 2017 and 2021, accepted the Republican Party’s nomination on July 19.
Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election. However, the Republican leader claimed that the polls were not fair and that there was a conspiracy to stop him from winning another term.
Trump’s assertion led to his supporters storming the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, to prevent Biden from being certified as the next president.
In May, Trump became the first former United States president to be convicted of a felony after a court in New York found him guilty in a case pertaining to illegally influencing the 2016 presidential election.
The United States defines a “felony” as a crime that is punishable by death or imprisonment for over a year.
