Vice President Kamala Harris and the immediate past President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning entered the final lap as they run a tight neck-to-neck race to the White House in what has been described as the “closest race in history” of United States Presidential elections.
Earlier yesterday, Harris engaged in last minute move to rally Americans to vote in this pivotal election, delivering her final campaign speech in Pennsylvania, one of seven battleground states. “Just one more day until the most consequential election of our lifetimes, and the momentum is on our side,” she said in Philadelphia. “This could be one of the closest races in history—every vote counts.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, with the goal of making history as the first woman and the first person of Indian descent to become President of the United States.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump is seeking a historic comeback to the White House after his contentious loss in 2020. If Trump wins, it would mark the first time in over a century that a president has served two non-consecutive terms.
In the 2016 election, Trump won the presidency by securing 304 electoral votes to 227 against Hillary Clinton, even though he trailed Clinton by more than 2 percentage points and about 2.8 million votes in the popular vote.
However, in the 2020 election, Trump was defeated by Joe Biden, who won with 306 electoral votes to 232 and led Trump by over 700,000 votes in the popular vote. Trump has continued to deny the 2020 election results, claiming widespread voter fraud, a stance that sparked protests by his supporters and culminated in the January 6 Capitol Riots.
However, this November 5 presidential election, voters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will cast ballots between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
According to NBC News, Presidents are elected using the Electoral College, which allocates votes to each state based on the number House and Senate members who represent the state in Congress. A candidate needs at least 270 Electoral College votes to be elected president. Most states allocate all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote. Nebraska and Maine both allocate two of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote and then one for the winner in each congressional district. Trump’s pitch to voters has focused on the economy, immigration and crime. Harris, since taking over as the Democratic standard-bearer after President Joe Biden dropped out, has argued she would usher in a new era and has campaigned on improving the care economy, protecting abortion rights and guarding democracy.
Sunita Williams to cast her vote from space – The Times of India reports
Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams, currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS), is preparing to vote in the US presidential election today while orbiting Earth, approximately 400 km above its surface.
Astronauts unable to reach their polling stations can still participate in elections from space. Similar to how people on Earth use absentee ballots, astronauts utilize a system that mirrors this process to cast their vote. After completing a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot, an astronaut receives an electronic version. This electronic ballot then travels a remarkable distance—1.2 million miles—from the space station to Mission Control at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
The ballot’s journey relies on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System for secure transmission. From the space station, the encrypted ballot travels to a test facility in New Mexico before reaching Johnson Space Center. Finally, the ballot arrives at its final destination: the astronaut’s county clerk, who officially counts the vote.
