About 4 in 10 voters said they were very confident that their ballots would be accurately counted nationwide, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 115,000 voters in the United States.

About 3 in 4 voters said they were at least somewhat confident, while nearly 1 in 4 were not confident in the ballot counts.

Voters were more confident in the tallies in their individual states, with about half saying they were very confident.

Officials associated with both political parties are denying Trump’s claim of “massive cheating” in Philadelphia.

On social media, one of three Philadelphia election board members, Seth Bluestein, a Republican, said there is “absolutely no truth to this allegation. It is yet another example of disinformation.”

Voting in the city is “safe and secure,” he said.

Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Department of State said, “Pennsylvania counties, including Philadelphia, are running a safe and secure election.”

Trump provided no details about the alleged cheating. His spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment about what he meant.

Another metro Atlanta county has seen voting disrupted by bomb threats.

About an hour before polls were to close, officials in DeKalb County said they received bomb threats against five polling places.

Officials in the overwhelmingly Democratic suburb said voting had been suspended at those locations until police confirm there are no bombs.

County officials say they’re seeking a court order to extend voting, which is routine in Georgia when a polling place is disrupted.

Some polling places in Fulton and Gwinnett counties were targeted earlier Tuesday. Those threats were found to be false.

“Rest assured that we are working quickly to ensure every voter will have an opportunity to cast their ballot despite these bomb threats,” DeKalb elections director Keisha Smith said in a statement.

A judge in Pennsylvania’s Fayette County has blocked a local judge of elections from doing a unilateral hand count of ballots in violation of the state election code.

Washington Township Judge of Election Vincent Manetta expressed his intention to “remove the ballots from the ballot box and audit or hand count the votes cast for each presidential candidate,” according to an emergency petition from Marybeth Kuznik, director of the Fayette County Bureau of Elections.

Judge Linda Cordaro ordered Manetta to comply with state election law.

If he fails to comply, the judge directed the sheriff’s department to escort a poll worker and voting materials to the Fayette County Election Bureau.

Voting hours have been extended at five polling places in Georgia’s Fulton County that were briefly closed earlier in the day because of bomb threats that were determined to be non-credible.

Each voting location’s hours have been extended for as long as they were closed.

The extensions range from 10 minutes at one location to 45 minutes at two locations.

A technical glitch in ballot printers at more than a dozen polling places in Arizona’s rural Apache County meant long waits for voters.

“Poll workers were encouraging people to leave and come back later in the day when the printer was fixed,” said Zane James, who voted in the community of Wheatfields after waiting 2 1/2 hours in 40-degree weather.

The printer was fixed, “but five to 10 people left and I don’t know if they are coming back,” he said.

Rita Vaughan, the Apache County elections director, said technicians fixed the problem.

She said polling places stayed open and people voted with paper ballots or accessible voting devices used by people with disabilities or language issues.

The Native vote helped push Biden over the top in Arizona in 2020.

Trump drew a diverse crowd, including Navajo families from neighboring Arizona, when he visited New Mexico last week.

After years of lingering inflation, voters expressed concern about high costs at home and in their communities.

About 7 in 10 voters said they were “very concerned” about the impact of the cost of food and groceries on their household budgets, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 115,000 voters nationwide.

Just over half said they were very concerned about health care costs, and about half said they were very concerned about housing costs.

Asked about the cost of housing “within their community,” roughly 6 in 10 said they were very concerned.

Nationally, nearly half of voters also said they were very concerned about the cost of gas affecting their household budget.

A judge has declined to grant a two-hour extension of voting hours in Kentucky’s most populous county after problems with electronic poll books led to delays at some precincts.

Election officials in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, said delays involved loading poll books to include the 113,000 early voters who cast ballots before Election Day.

Ashley Tinius, a spokesperson for the Jefferson County Clerk, said no voters were turned away and the electronic issues were resolved later Tuesday morning.

The Kentucky Democratic Party asked a judge to extend voting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The party’s motion said, “Delays caused by the e-polling books crash caused some voters to leave their place in line and forego casting a ballot.”

The state Republican Party opposed the motion, arguing that only the Kentucky General Assembly can set election times and any vote cast after 6 p.m. would be illegal.

A federal judge Tuesday scolded Republican Party attorneys for what he called a “frivolous” lawsuit that accused election officials in seven Georgia counties of breaking the law by letting voters hand-deliver their absentee ballots over the weekend.

An attorney for the Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party told U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker he wasn’t trying to stop the 1,300 ballots from being counted but wanted them kept separate from other ballots.

The groups previously indicated they wanted the ballots as potential evidence for future litigation.

The GOP lawyers argued it was illegal for county election officials to accept mail ballots dropped off in person after early voting ended Friday.

Baker said Georgia law clearly states that county election officials are required to accept absentee ballots until the polls close on Election Day.

Bomb threats to Georgia voting sites were made over the internet and included Cyrillic letters, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.

That gave election officials a clue about the origins of the threats, he said at an early evening briefing in Atlanta.

“We jumped on it quickly and then the FBI then followed our lead,” he said. Raffensperger said that once the FBI released a statement about the matter earlier Tuesday, the threats “kind of tapered off.”

He said of the culprits: “I guess they realized that dog won’t hunt today in Georgia.”

The envelope was sequestered, tested and found to not be harmful, according to police.

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who oversees elections statewide, commended the county clerk and her employees for acting swiftly to ensure the safety of those in the area.

“This incident will be fully investigated. Anyone attempting to intimidate election workers or disrupt election administration in any way can expect to face criminal charges,” Henderson said.

Election officials in Milwaukee are recounting more than 30,000 absentee ballots because doors on the ballot tabulators were not properly sealed.

The recounting was being done “out of an abundance of caution,” said Melissa Howard, spokesperson for the Milwaukee Election Commission.

There was no reason to believe that any ballots already counted had been tampered with, she said.

Howard said they were taking the step of recounting all of the ballots in an effort to be “completely, fully transparent.” The problem was due to human error, she said.

The decision will delay the reporting of about 105,000 absentee ballots that could determine whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump win Wisconsin.

Polls in a few Indiana districts across the state and polls on the eastern side of Kentucky are the first to close in the nation.

The first large poll closing comes at 7 p.m. EST. That closure includes most of Florida, all of Georgia and Virginia, among others.

Fayette County has gone to court to block a local judge of elections from doing a unilateral hand count of ballots in violation of the state’s election code.

Marybeth Kuznik, director of the Fayette County Bureau of Elections, says in a court filing that Washington Township Judge of Election Vincent Manetta “reported that after polls close today, he intends to remove the ballots from the ballot box and audit or hand count the votes cast for each presidential candidate.”

Completed ballots are supposed to be run through tabulating equipment.

Kuznik asked a judge to order Manetta to comply with state election law. The judge has yet to rule.

In Pinellas County, Florida, some voters couldn’t go to their usual voting locations because of recent hurricanes.

The county, which is home to St. Petersburg, was one of the areas of Florida hardest hit by hurricanes Helene and Milton in recent weeks.

The storms flooded tens of thousands of homes and businesses and left debris and sand covering streets.

As a result, 25 polling places in the county were relocated, according to the county’s Supervisor of Elections.

Voters showing up at their usual polling places were greeted by volunteers who redirected them to their temporary polling places.

The four NASA astronauts living at the International Space Station requested absentee ballots ahead of Election Day.

Two astronauts — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — have been at the space station since June.

They flew up as test pilots aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

But their mission went from eight days to eight months after NASA opted to bring the problem-plagued capsule back empty and switch them to a SpaceX ride home next year.

Immigration has risen in importance since the last presidential election, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide.

Support for tough immigration policies has grown, too.

About 2 in 10 voters now say immigration is the primary problem the U.S. is facing, a considerable increase from 2020.

And fewer voters now say immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.

More want them to be deported to the country they came from.

The future of U.S. democracy was especially likely to factor into voters’ decisions at the ballot box, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide.

About half of voters said that democracy was the most important factor to their vote – more so than other factors including high prices, abortion, the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, assassination attempts on Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump or the legal cases against him.

Four in 10 voters said high prices were the main driver of their votes, and about 3 in 10 said that about the future of free speech in the U.S.

Voters were feeling sour about the economy as they went to the polls this year.

About 4 in 10 voters said “the economy and jobs” is the top issue facing the country, up from about 3 in 10 in 2020.

That’s according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide.

More voters this year described their family’s financial situation as “falling behind” and fewer said they are “holding steady” than in 2020.

About 6 in 10 voters described the condition of the U.S. economy as “not so good” or “poor,” roughly in line with the share who said that in 2020.

Most voters went to the polls with a strong desire for change in how the country is run, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide.

About one-quarter of voters said they want “complete and total upheaval,” more than half want “substantial change,” and about 1 in 10 want a “small” amount of change.

Few voters said they want “no change.”

The finding reinforced a broader sense of unhappiness with the country’s outlook.

Seven in 10 voters said the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 3 in 10 said things are going in the right direction.

Four years ago, COVID-19 was the dominant issue for voters as they went to the polls — but this year, immigration and abortion are at the top of more voters’ minds, although they both still fall behind the economy and jobs.

That’s according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide.

Immigration and abortion barely registered for voters in the last presidential election, but this year about 2 in 10 voters said immigration is the top issue facing the country, and about 1 in 10 said the same about abortion.

Both issues have taken center stage in the presidential campaign, with Trump emphasizing tough immigration policies and Harris stressing her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion.

Voters arriving at a polling place in Jacksonville, Florida, were diverted to another voting location for a short time Tuesday after a suspicious package was found outside.

Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland said in an email that about 20 voters were sent to other locations for about 40 minutes before operations at the polling place resumed. The package ended up being the personal belongings of a homeless person, he said.

Two counties in battleground North Carolina will delay turning in their results by 30 minutes after the State Board of Elections agreed to extend the close of voting at two precincts due to technical problems there.

The board voted to push the closing time at one precinct in Burke County and another precinct in Wilson County to 8 p.m.

According to election officials, likely voters at the Wilson County precinct were unable to cast ballots for almost an hour and a half because a printer needed to generate voter authorization forms wasn’t working.

And in Burke County, people couldn’t vote for about 30 or 40 minutes when a precinct laptop computer with the official pollbook had a problem.

The state board won’t publish unofficial results from Burke and Wilson counties until voting ends at the precincts.

Results in the state’s other 98 counties can be reported at the normal closing time.

Authorities in the Denver area are investigating after election officials discovered “discrepancies” with signatures on several mail ballots sent from an adult day care facility in the city.

That’s according to Denver clerk and recorder Paul Lopez in a statement.

Election workers in Colorado check the signatures on mail ballots against voter signatures on file to make sure they’re submitted by the voter the ballot was sent to.

Lopez said his office notified law enforcement and the Denver district attorney’s office was investigating.

He also said law enforcement in nearby counties were also investigating but did not explain why.

Denver’s KMGH-TV, which first reported the investigation, said ballots from the facility were sent to six counties.

Colorado overwhelmingly votes by mail.

In Central Iowa’s Story County, home to about 100,000 people and the city of Ames, voting machines at some precincts malfunctioned, portending possible delays to reporting results.

“We are aware of technical issues regarding tabulators in some precincts in Story County,” said Ashley Hunt Esquivel, a spokesperson for Iowa Secretary of State’s Office.

“The auditor is working with the vendor and our office to resolve it. It is not stopping anyone from casting a single ballot. It may impact how quickly we can report results,” Esquivel said.

Story County Auditor Lucy Martin told the Des Moines Register that machines did not read “certain ballot styles” at about 12 of the county’s 45 polling locations.

Election workers would have to count ballots at those locations by hand, according to local Democratic and Republican Party officials.

The machines were tested and the cause of the technical difficulties was unknown, Martin added.

It’s now five consecutive presidential year election days that have been winners on Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 42,221.88 on Tuesday, up 427.48 points from Monday’s close. That’s a 1% percent climb.

And history says it could have been predicted. Here’s what the Dow did on Election Day for the four most recent presidential races:

• Nov. 3, 2020 – Up 554.98, 2.1%
• Nov. 8, 2016 – Up 73.14, 0.4%
• Nov. 6, 2012 – Up 133.24, 1.0%
• Nov. 4, 2008 – Up 305.45, 3.28%

The last time there was a down day on Wall Street on Election Day during a presidential year was Nov. 2, 2004, and it was nominal.

In Richmond, Virginia, the local Electoral Board held an emergency meeting to remove a precinct chief.

Board Chair Starlet Stevens said in a telephone interview that 11 voters were given ballots that only had the presidential race and not local races.

Because they cast the ballots, they were unable to redo their votes with the correct ballots.

Stevens said the Board voted to remove the precinct chief not for the error but because the chief was being “disrespectful.”

The Board also received a complaint that the precinct chief refused to help a person who wanted to vote curbside, something that Virginia law allows for anyone 65 and older or physically disabled.

Coming around 6 p.m. Eastern: Kornacki Cam.

The super-popular NBC News National Political Correspondent Steve Kornacki will be part of a multiview experience put together by Peacock and is expected to last until around 2 a.m.

Also part of the multiview (basically, some of the same technology NBC utilized during the Paris Olympics) is a live stream of NBC News coverage and analysis, projected Electoral College results — and lots and lots of Kornacki, who’ll be at his big board to break down all the numbers.

“We’re caffeinating and hydrating him. We’re making sure he’s eating,” NBC’s Craig Melvin wrote on X. “@SteveKornacki, the national treasure, is rested and eager for his quadrennial Super Bowl.”

Officials in Northville, Michigan, closed a polling place at midday and sent voters to another precinct in the Detroit suburb because of a natural gas leak. Consumers Energy was investigating the leak.

Ballots sent to some polling locations in St. Clair County, Alabama, for Tuesday’s election were missing a state amendment and a local amendment, local probate judge Andrew Weathington said at a news conference Tuesday.

Judge Weathington said the first round of corrected ballots had been ordered from Birmingham and estimated they would arrive just before 2 p.m. CT.

“I’m as frustrated as anybody, and I understand that we have to take off work and all that stuff to go vote. And I apologize. I don’t know what else to say other than we’re very, very sorry,” Weathington said.

The local circuit court judge ordered polling locations across the country to stay open for two additional hours this evening, until 9 p.m. to accommodate the error. Weathington said ballots that had already been cast would still be counted. There are just over 95,000 residents in St. Clair County, according to the 2023 U.S. Census.

Officials warned residents to continue to expect long lines at polling locations.

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said in an email that his office is aware of the delays and stressed that his office is not involved in inspecting and printing the ballots.

Tennessee voters will decide whether to reelect Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn to a second term or choose Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson.

Tennessee hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide position in nearly two decades, but Johnson is hoping her recent meteoric rise to fame from nearly being expelled by state lawmakers last year will woo enough voters.

Blackburn has run a much more subdued campaign compared to six years ago, when an open seat forced a heated race between the Republican and former Democratic Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen. Blackburn has largely avoided Johnson throughout the campaign and declined to participate in any debates with the Democrat.

Johnson gained national attention when she joined fellow Democratic state Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones as they walked to the front of the House floor with a bullhorn while hundreds of gun control advocates flooded the Capitol to show their support for putting more restrictions on firearms. The demonstration took place just days after a school shooting that killed 6 people, including three young children, at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville.

▶ Read more about Tennessee’s Senate race

The FBI says bomb threats sent to polling locations in several states originate from Russian email domains and have been deemed non-credible.

The FBI did not identify the states in question, but Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said earlier Tuesday that the state’s election process had snuffed out some bomb threats he says came from Russia.

Officials in Fulton County, Georgia, said they got “multiple calls” and the threats forced a brief closure of two polling places.

The bomb threats were among multiple disturbances U.S. officials are tracking. But Cait Conley, a senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters on a call Tuesday that there were no national-level security incidents that were threatening to disrupt the election on a wide scale.

Officials continue to warn of what they say is an unprecedented level of foreign influence and disinformation that they expect will persist beyond Election Day.

In the 2020 presidential election, Florida reported the results of more than 99% of ballots cast within a few hours of polls closing.

In California, almost one-third of ballots were uncounted after election night. The state was making almost daily updates to its count through Dec. 3, a full month after Election Day.

This wasn’t unusual or unexpected.

California, the nation’s most populous state, is consistently among the slowest to report all its election results. Florida, the third-most populous state, is generally among the first to finish.

The Constitution sets out broad principles for electing a national government and leaves the details to the states. The choices made by state lawmakers and election officials as they sort out those details affect everything from how voters cast a ballot, how quickly the tabulation and release of results takes place, how elections are kept secure and how officials maintain voters’ confidence in the process.

The gap between when California and Florida are able to finalize their count is the natural result of election officials in the two states choosing to emphasize different concerns and set different priorities.

▶ Read more about how the two states differ in their vote-counting systems

U.S. Capitol Police say the man was stopped Tuesday during a security screening at the Capitol Visitor Center. Authorities say he smelled of fuel and was carrying the flare gun and torch.

Officials have canceled public tours of the Capitol for the remainder of the day.

Police say they’re still investigating.

The arrest comes as authorities are on heightened alert for security issues around the nation’s capitol and have increased patrols in areas downtown and near the White House around Election Day. Nearly four years ago, a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

They take college football very seriously in Clemson, South Carolina.

But no, they did not take away Tigers coach Dabo Swinney’s right to vote just because his team lost to Louisville last week.

Let’s explain: Dabo Swinney’s given first name is William. Dabo Swinney went to vote on Tuesday. The state of South Carolina said William Swinney had already voted.

“I’m like, ‘Dang, they done voted me out of the state. Lost a game. … They done shipped me off,’” Swinney said.

Here was the issue: Dabo’s oldest son, also named William, voted last week. They counted William Jr. as William Sr., apparently. Hence, the confusion. Dabo Swinney got to submit a paper ballot and there will be a hearing Friday to get it all cleared up.

“It was quite an experience this morning,” the coach said. “Me and Will, our two votes will count on Friday.”

While it might take days to determine the balance of power in the House and Senate, some races will be called right as polls close.

How is that possible?

Race calls at poll closing time in uncontested or landslide races have been a routine part of election nights for decades. The Associated Press will consider multiple factors and analyze available data before determining whether a winner can be declared when polls close in a given state. But the AP will never declare the outcome in a competitive contest before enough votes are counted to make the winner clear.

Michigan voters are deciding between Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Republican former congressman Mike Rogers in a tight U.S. Senate battleground contest that could sway the balance of federal power.

Slotkin had a clear head start, but as Republicans became more confident about Donald Trump’s presidential prospects in Michigan, the contest drew more attention from funders who believed Rogers had a good chance of becoming the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat in the state in 30 years.

The race could determine whether Democrats continue to hold their slim majority in the Senate, where they’re defending more seats than Republicans in this election.

▶ Read more about Michigan’s Senate race

Election Day voting unfolded largely smoothly across the nation Tuesday but with scattered reports of extreme weather, ballot printing errors and technical problems causing delays.

Most of the hiccups occurring by mid-day were “largely expected routine and planned-for events,” said Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a news briefing. She said the agency wasn’t currently tracking any national, significant incidents affecting election security.

Helping voting run relatively smoothly on Election Day was the fact that tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots. Those included record numbers of voters in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner of the presidential race.

▶ Read more about how Election Day is going so far

If you haven’t registered to vote, but you still hope to cast a ballot, don’t fret quite yet.

The District of Columbia and 21 states offer same-day registration, according to the Center for Election Innovation and Research. That means you can show up with the necessary documentation and register to vote and cast your ballot before the end of the day.

The following states and the District of Columbia offer same-day registration: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

A provisional ballot is used to ensure every registered voter can cast a ballot in an election. The unique kind of ballot is cast when there are questions about a voter’s registration status, whether they don’t have photo identification in a state that requires it, or, in some cases, if the voter made an error on their mail-in ballot. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 guarantees access to a provisional ballot.

According to MIT’s Election Lab, how exactly provisional ballots are handled varies from each state, but they’re segregated from traditionally cast ballots on Election Day so each ballot’s status can be determined. According to the Election Administration and Voting Survey compiled by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, roughly 700,000 provisional ballots were cast in federal elections in 2022, and around 550,000 were counted.

Last week, the United States Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal from Republicans that could have led to thousands of provisional ballots not being counted in Pennsylvania. The ruling will let voters cast a provisional ballot on Election Day if their mail-in ballot is to be rejected for a garden-variety error.

A man was arrested in upstate New York on Tuesday for threatening to burn down a polling site after he was told his registration wasn’t current, police said.

The man went to vote in the town of Fowler near the Canadian border around 6:30 a.m., New York State Police said in a news release.

The man, who had previously been convicted of a felony, was told he was ineligible to vote because he had not re-registered after being released from prison.

The man became irate and began threatening to return with a gun or to burn the place down, police said.

The man fled but was later picked up by state police and brought to the station for questioning. Charges against him were pending.

In a new video posted early Election Day, Beyoncé cosplays as Pamela Anderson in the television program “Baywatch” — red one-piece swimsuit and all — and asks viewers to vote.

In the two-and-a-half minute clip, set to most of “Bodyguard,” a cut from her 2024 country album “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé channels the blonde bombshell before concluding with a simple message, written in white text: “Happy Beylloween,” followed by “Vote.”

At a rally for Donald Trump in Pittsburgh on Monday night, the former president spoke dismissively about Beyoncé’s appearance at a Kamala Harris rally in Houston last month, drawing boos for the megastar from his supporters.

“Beyoncé would come in. Everyone’s expecting a couple of songs. There were no songs. There was no happiness,” Trump said.

She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Cleveland — but she endorsed the vice president and gave a moving speech.

“I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said. “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided.”

The Harris campaign has taken on Beyonce’s track “Freedom,” a cut from her landmark 2016 album “Lemonade,” as its anthem.

Alaska voters are deciding Tuesday a hard-fought race for the state’s only U.S. House seat that could help decide control of that chamber. They’re also choosing whether to repeal the state’s system of open primaries and ranked choice general elections just four years after opting to give that system a go.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola sought to fend off GOP efforts to wrest back the seat held for 49 years by Republican Rep. Don Young, who died in 2022. Peltola’s main challenger was Republican Nick Begich, who’s from a family of prominent Democrats and was among the opponents she defeated in special and regular elections two years ago when Peltola, who is Yup’ik, became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress.

▶ Read more about Alaska’s House race

As news outlets get ready for election night, they’re not only focusing on what happens. They’re keeping watch over what doesn’t.

Several plans to combat misinformation are in place across newsrooms that will follow the climax of a hard-fought campaign. The Associated Press and others will take special steps to explain what they do. The New York Times is assigning reporters to comb the Internet for the first sign of new conspiracies. An NPR reporter will look for mischief created by artificial intelligence. ABC News has tried “pre-bunks” to prepare its viewers.

False stories that infected the political debate after Hurricane Helene this fall were a sobering reminder of how quickly things can spread.

Other organizations are making similar promises, including making clear to people when it’s too soon for conclusions to be drawn. “My mantra on election night is radical transparency,” said Rick Klein, ABC News Washington bureau chief.

▶ Read more about how news outlets are preparing to combat potential misinformation on Election Day