Rachel Looker
US Reporter

The 2024 presidential race will likely come down to seven key battleground states, where political campaigns are fiercely competing for votes. Here's how some people who live there feel about being the centre of such focus:

Seventy-four-year-old Mary Cider, from Wisconsin, says she is voting for Harris and worries about Trump's campaign distorting facts.

"The ads have gotten horrendous... distortion is so over the top," she says.

Andy Jones, 50, from Pennsylvania, plans to vote for Trump for a third time, but says his neighbours are equally split across who they support.

"One neighbour across the street might have two Trump signs and then the neighbour next door might have four Harris signs. It's like a battle of who can out-sign the other person," he says.

• READ MORE:US voters on living in a swing state

Nebraska's Supreme Court has just issued a ruling which allows felons who have completed their sentences to vote.

The ruling comes ahead of the state's voter registration deadline on 25 October.

The court decided in its split decision that the law giving former felons the right to vote is not unconstitutional, as Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers had argued.

There are at least 7,000 Nebraskans eligible to vote under the new law, according to estimates from the Voting Rights Restoration Coalition.

Image source, Getty

On Monday night, Donald Trump was filmed standing onstage following a town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, dancing along to the music playing over loudspeakers.

Among the nine songs Trump stood onstage for was Rufus Wainwrights' version of ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen. Wainwright has now issued a statement that said he was "mortified" that the song played at the rally, that he endorses Kamala Harris.

Wainwright joins the growing list of musicians who have asked Trump not to use their music, including Celine Dion, Jack White, ABBA, Foo Fighters, the Village People, the Rolling Stones, Rihanna and the estate of Sinead O'Connor.

Earlier in the year, Beyonce issued a cease-and-desist letter after the Trump campaign used her song “Freedom” in an online video. The song would go on to become a centrepiece of the Harris's campaign.

Image source, Getty Images

Nearly 30 million people cast their ballots before election day in 2020.

Early voting - which allows people to vote in-person or by mail before election day - has previously favoured the Democratic Party. Their candidate, Joe Biden, won the presidential election in 2020.

Democratic voters tend to participate in mail-in voting in higher rates, also known as casting an absentee ballot. In the 2024 election, Republicans are trying to encourage more early-voting/mail-in voting.

Republicans in the last election heavily criticised mail-in voting as being ripe with fraud. Numerous national and state-level studies have shown that although there have been isolated cases, electoral fraud is very rare.

Many US states have begun early voting in the 2024 presidential election - and it's off to a rapid start.

More than 300,000 ballots were cast on the first day of early voting in the key battleground state of Georgia..

All eyes are on the presidential race, but whoever wins will need a friendly House or Senate to achieve any major legislation.

The Democrats currently have a narrow majority in the Senate, but it is up for grabs this election.

One area the Democratic Party is eyeing - deep-red Texas.

On Tuesday, Texas' two-term incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz debated against his Democratic challenger Colin Allred.

Their first and only debate went viral online after a few heated exchanges.

Allred, who served as Congressman during the 6 January Capitol riot, said on that day he texted his family he loved them and prepared to defend the building, adding that his opponent Cruz was "hiding in a supply closet".

Allred also reminded those watching that in 2021, while a deadly winter storm gripped Texas and caused the power grid to collapse, Cruz was vacationing in Cancún, Mexico.

Cruz, a talented debater, also attacked Allred - particularly on the topic of transgenderism.

He accused Allred of supporting boys playing in girls' sports, which Allred denied. But Cruz shot back quickly: "Then why did you vote for it?"

Image source, Getty Images

Billionaire Elon Musk has poured nearly $75m into his own pro-Donald Trump campaign group over a three-month period, according to a recent federal disclosure., external

The world's richest person is a key ally and even joined the former president on stage when Trump returned to Butler last month, the scene of the failed assassination attempt.

Musk's America PAC (political action committee) is used to support Trump's campaign and focuses on the crucial swing states.

A super PAC is an independent organisations that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on ads and other efforts to get a particular candidate elected. But they are not allowed to officially coordinate with that candidate or their campaign.

Musk's spending means the Tesla and X boss is one of the most significant financial backers of the Republican candidate at this election.

Musk has also said he will appear in person at a series of events linked to his pro-Trump campaign in Pennsylvania - a key swing state both candidates are desperate to win.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter.

Readers in the UK can sign up here.

Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Image source, Reuters

A judge in the US state of Georgia has blocked an order for ballots in November's presidential election to be counted by hand.

Judge Robert McBurney ruled poll workers would not have received adequate training to handle millions of ballots, adding that the last-minute change would have led to "administrative chaos".

The hand count mandate was passed by the pro-Trump majority on the Georgia election board last month, and Tuesday's ruling was welcomed by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

Early voting began in Georgia on Tuesday, with record numbers casting their votes in the key swing state ahead of Election Day on 5 November.

More than 328,000 people voted in person or by post on the first day of voting, officials said - more than double the previous record of 136,000 in 2020.

About five million votes for president were cast in Georgia that year, with Democrat Joe Biden winning the state by just under 12,000.

• READ MORE: US judge blocks Georgia order to count votes by hand

It's still early in the US, so let's get up to speed up on what happened yesterday:

• Early voting began in Georgia, one of the key swing states which will decide who enters the White House. A record number of voters turned up, at least 328,000 people
• Also in Georgia, a judge temporarily blocked a move to mandate hand-counting for ballot papers, which was backed by Trump supporters

• Elsewhere, Kamala Harris has tried to refine her pitch to black voters, after polls suggested Trump is making inroads with the group

• Campaign filings show Elon Musk has donated $75m in recent months to the pro-Donald Trump campaign group he set up

Brandon Livesay
Live editor

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the US election.

We're starting off by looking at a Donald Trump town hall event with an all-female audience. It airs on Fox News later on Wednesday, but we have seen some quotes from the pre-recorded event.

One that stands out is Trump declaring he is the "father of IVF".

“We really are the party for IVF,” Trump told the town hall host Harris Faulkner, when speaking about the fertility treatment. “We want fertilisation, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we’re totally in favour.”

IVF has become an issue in this election after an Alabama court ruled in February that frozen embryos created through fertility treatment are children.

Kamala Harris reacted to Trump's statement on X, saying: "Donald Trump called himself 'the father of IVF.' What is he talking about? His abortion bans have already jeopardized access to it in states across the country—and his own platform could end IVF altogether."

We will bring you more from the town hall when it airs. And we will have key updates from Harris's first ever formal interview on Fox News, which also airs later today.

Stick with us for another busy day on the campaign trail.