— Georgia turnout on track to exceed 2020: More than 700,000 Georgians have cast ballots today, putting the state on track to surpass its 2020 turnout , according to an afternoon update from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Raffensperger said that if turnout trends hold throughout the rest of Election Day, there could be around 1.1 million votes cast today. When combined with the state’s record-breaking early vote turnout, that would mean more than 5 million votes in total. Just under 5 million Georgians participated in the 2020 election. — Trump votes in Florida, says he doesn’t have a speech prepared: Former President Donald Trump cast his ballot today in Palm Beach where he said he’d run his last campaign even if he lost but predicted a “very big victory.” “If I win I know what I’m going to say, and I don’t even want to think about the losing part,” he told reporters who asked whether he’d prepared a speech for the evening. — Judge knocks down RNC’s ‘red herring’ attempt to invalidate Georgia votes: A federal judge in Georgia said an eleventh-hour bid by the Republican Party to set aside some absentee votes from Democratic-leaning counties was rife with dishonesty , “red herrings” and demands that would have required him to break his oath to the Constitution. In a stinging oral ruling denying the Republican National Committee’s bid for emergency action, U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker, a Trump appointee, warned that the party’s bid to toss absentee ballots collected in seven historically Democratic-leaning counties in Georgia over the weekend was based on “no supporting facts” and was an attempt to “tip the scales of this election by discriminating against” people less likely to back Republican candidates. — Walz makes one last pitch in central Pennsylvania, a traditionally GOP area: Tim Walz made his final argument that Kamala Harris will be a president for all Americans in central Pennsylvania, a conservative stronghold beginning to see Democratic gains . Traditionally Republican south-central Pennsylvania hasn’t gotten much attention from the Democratic ticket in the past, at least not compared with Pittsburgh, the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia and its suburbs. But Walz’s visit this morning, along with his wife and two children, to a diner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, reflects the emergence of Pennsylvania’s state capital region as a contested battleground this year. — Man tries to enter Capitol with torch, flare gun: Capitol Police arrested a man attempting to enter the Capitol Visitors Center with a torch, flare gun and smelling of fuel, according to the department. The man was stopped just after 1:30 p.m. at the screening checkpoint for entering the CVC, according to a statement from USCP. The Capitol Visitors Center, which welcomes about three million visitors per year, is closed “for the day” as the investigation into the incident continues. Staff-led tours are still happening. — What TV ads tell us about each campaign’s closing message: In the presidential campaigns’ TV ads down the final stretch, it’s been all about the economy. A majority of ads targeting swing-state voters in the last month have touched on economic issues — with Donald Trump and his allies hammering Kamala Harris on inflation, while Democrats promote Harris’ plans to reduce taxes and hit Trump as favoring policies for the wealthy. And Harris has been on viewers’ screens far more than Trump in the final stretch of the campaign. — An hour-by-hour guide for watching election returns
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