Kentucky election officials reject claim about markings on ballotspublished at 20:29 Greenwich Mean Time

20:29 GMT

By Jake Horton

An image spreading on social media purports to show a postal ballot in Kentucky which already had a mark on it next to Kamala Harris’s name, with the suggestion that voting for anyone else would render it void.

One post, viewed more than three million times, said the picture showed “weird ballot shenanigans happening”.

Image source, X

BBC Verify spoke to the Kentucky Board of Elections who rejected the claim.

They say they have mailed out 130,000 ballots so far and have not been made aware of any complaints regarding postal ballots having pre-printed marks in any candidate selection boxes.

“As no one has presented a pre-marked ballot to election administrators or law enforcement, the claim that at least one ballot may have had a pre-printed mark in Kentucky, currently only exists in the vacuum of social media,” they said in a statement.

The election board confirmed that for postal ballots in Kentucky if more than one candidate choice is marked in ink then the ballot will be counted if the voter circles their preferred choice.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

Many of the Latinos here in Allentown - where I've been for the last couple of hours - are foreign-born, having immigrated to the US at some point earlier in their lives.

Most are quick to point out that Latino turnout in the area has, traditionally, been largely subdued relative to the size of the population.

But they also say that they see an energy in the area that they think was missing in 2016 and 2020.

"Pennsylvania is like a pendulum. Everyone knows that they need to get out and vote," said Francisca Mendez, an Allentown resident who came from Puebla, Mexico more than three decades ago.

"This community really needs to get out there and vote. We need accessible schools, and we need affordable housing. It's so expensive," she added in Spanish. "We need elected officials to turn around and realise we've got needs."

Mendez said she thinks people across the country will be "surprised" at how active Latino voters are in Pennsylvania.

"People are mobilised," she added. "Even people in this community who can't vote are telling people how important it is."

Holly Honderich
US reporter

Image source, Jacquelynn Buck

For the most part, Allison McCullough, 43, has been a reliable Democrat voter.

And as a black woman, McCullough has, at times, been overcome by the historic nomination of Kamala Harris.

But McCullough won't be voting for her.

Instead, in protest of the “heartbreaking” war in Gaza, she will cast her ballot for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

It wasn't an easy decision.For months, McCullough hoped Harris would demand a ceasefire and fully acknowledge the damage caused.

But Harris has mostly stuck to the same talking points as Joe Biden, McCullough said.

“I cannot morally vote for someone who is allowing us to send millions of dollars and support somewhere where they’re actively killing women and children in the name of self defence.”

McCullough knows her vote may inadvertently benefit Donald Trump. “But I’m looking at who’s responsible for things right now,” she said.

• Read more about the moments that made up voters' minds

Image source, Reuters

Nikki Haley - the last-standing opponent against Trump in the presidential primaries - threw her support behind the former president again in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Sunday.

"I don’t agree with Mr. Trump 100% of the time," Haley wrote. "But I do agree with him most of the time, and I disagree with Ms. Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call."

She has repeatedly supported Trump since dropping out of the race, being much more measured in her remarks about him than before, having previously called him "unhinged" and "not qualified" for office.

The two have yet to make an appearance together on the campaign trail, possibly indicating unhealed wounds from the primaries.

Haley has said she is on "stand by" should Trump call her to assist, but, with less than 24 hours until election day, there are no signs he intends to do so.

With hours to go, as America decides its 47th President - BBC News looks at all you need to know about a result which could change history.

Live from Washington DC we’ve got the latest on election night - with answers to all of your questions and more.

You can watch the programme live at the top of this page from 20:00GMT (15:00 ET).

Image source, Reuters

In one of her final pitches to Pennsylvania voters this afternoon, Kamala Harris has once again avoided mentioning her opponent - Donald Trump - by name.

While making a short speech to canvassers in Scranton, the vice-president said the campaign and the country are about building coalition and conversation as she seemed to lead with a message of hope and positivity.

“What you are all signing up to do today, and what you’ve been doing - like, let’s enjoy it, you know?” the vice-president said.

"We rise and fall together," she added, in what was her first of four stops in the state. "That's the strength of who we are."

Pennsylvania, a must-win for either candidate, is the swing state with the most electoral votes (19 out of 538) and it will likely prove decisive in the election's outcome.

Both presidential candidates are making stops in Pennsylvania today, with Harris finishing the day in Philadelphia and Trump in Grand Rapids, Michigan - another key swing state.

Did the Pentagon fail to send ballots to military members?published at 19:17 Greenwich Mean Time

19:17 GMT

By Joshua Cheetham

A post on X which has been viewed 28 million times claims “the Pentagon reportedly failed to send absentee ballots to active military service members before the election".

It references a letter to Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, written by three Republican members of US Congress, external, expressing “grave concern” over “deficiencies” in procedures for overseas military personnel to vote.

However, the letter does not accuse the Pentagon of failing to send them absentee ballots.

It is not the Pentagon’s job to do this - military personnel can vote abroad through the Federal Voting Assistance Program, external (FVAP) and ballots are sent to them by election officials where they are registered in the US.

If the ballot is in danger of not arriving before the voting deadline, personnel can vote via what is called a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB).

The letter claims an unspecified number of “service members” had requested a FWAB but were told their base had run out. However, it is possible to download and sign one through the FVAP website., external

We asked the Department of Defense for details about how many people had been affected by the issue, but it would not comment on that specifically. It did say that it had trained 3,000 Voting Assistance Officers to support people with voting worldwide.

Mike Wendling
Reporting from Milwaukee

Here in Wisconsin’s largest city, we’ve just heard a briefing from Paulina Gutierrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Elections Commission.

She’s been outlining plans for the vote count tomorrow night, which will take place in a nearby convention centre. Tabulation will involve 300 workers and 13 high-speed counting machines.

Despite those resources, Gutierrez says a process called “exporting” - verifying the vote totals and uploading them into a county-wide system - could take hours, and will likely stretch into early Wednesday.

Officials here say they’ve received 105,000 early ballots so far - that includes mail-in and in-person early votes - and ballots are still coming in. In 2020, the final figure was around 168,000.

Samantha Granville
Reporting from Phoenix, AZ

According to data published by the Arizona secretary of state, more than a third of registered voters in the state are independent voters.

Independent voters are a wild card. It’s hard to track who they voted for in the past, where they are, issues that matter to them and so on.

Candidates are constantly trying to shift their positions to reach these voters.

But when people talk about independent voters, we think about people who haven’t figured out yet how they are going to vote, but in reality it’s most Republican leaning independents or Democrat leaning independents with a tiny, tiny, tiny slice of persuadable voters.

According to exit polls in 2016, independents were 40% of the electorate. They broke by three points for former President Trump, and he went on to win the state that year.

In 2020 independents were 39% of the electorate, and Biden won them over Trump by nine, so definitely a key group.

So the key to an Arizona victory is locking in the independent vote.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

I've just a few minutes ago arrived in Allentown, Pennsylvania - a majority Latino town where both candidates have campaigned this election cycle.

It's also the site of a Harris rally just a few hours from now.

The area's connections with Latin America are hard to escape. I'm currently on seventh street - which most locals know by the Spanish name "Calle Siete". Dominican, Puerto Rican, Colombian and Mexican flags are everywhere, and most signs on businesses are bilingual - or purely in Spanish.

My first effort to talk to voters here was met with a bit of scorn.

"I'm really tired of this all. TV is nothing but commercials for these people," a quick-talking and animated Dominican, who asked only to be identified as Diego told me. "The rest of the time nobody comes to interview us. Just elections."

Ione Wells
Reporting from Michigan

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump's final rally, happening tonight in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will be situated within Kent County.

This area, once a Republican stronghold, flipped to Joe Biden in 2020, largely because of its increasingly diverse, college-educated and urban population leaning towards the Democrats’ policies.

Trump is struggling in areas like this, which have moved away from the Republicans due to some of his rhetoric and socially conservative values.

On the flipside, he's made gains in places like Michigan among - for example - some unionised white, working class voters who used to vote Democrat but now resonate with his economic policies and pledges on immigration.

One Trump supporter told me that the Republicans in Michigan used to be the party of the wealthy "country clubs", but that has been "reimagined".

No group should be viewed as homogenous, but these shifting demographic trends make the race so close to call, meaning neither candidate can solely rely on their core "base" here.

Image source, Reuters

More than 78 million people have already voted ahead of election day tomorrow. This means that more than half of the 150 million Americans who are expected to cast their ballot have already done so.

Our North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher has spotted some trends from the data some states have released:

• Republicans appear to be losing their wariness of early voting: They represent 36.1% of early votes cast nationwide (up from 30.5% in 2020), while Democrats account for 38.9% (44.8% in 2020)
• Women are turning out in large numbers: In the six states that report gender data, women are casting 54.2% of the early ballots so far, which is higher than in 2020 exit polls

• Looking at key states, there are mixed signals: Over 50% of eligible voters have now voted in Georgia, with early turnout slightly whiter and older than the early voting in 2020, potentially benefiting Donald Trump. But in Pennsylvania, more registered Democrats have voted than Republicans – although by a smaller margin than in 2020, when Joe Biden won the state

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, X and SpaceX and the world's richest man, has failed to turn up to a court hearing in Pennsylvania over the legality of his $1m daily giveaway - for the second time.

Since 19 October, registered voters in seven battleground states have been able to go into a draw to win the money if they sign a petition supporting free speech and gun rights.

The state's district attorney argues that the giveaway is an "illegal lottery".

Musk did not attend the first hearing last Thursday, and today, his lawyer Chris Gober told reporters outside the court that his client will not be "bullied".

In court, Gober said that the winners were not chosen at random, instead only people who would be good spokespeople for Musk's pro-Trump group, according to Reuters news agency.

Image source, Getty Images

In just a few minutes, North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher will be sending out his US Election Unspun newsletter, which helps make sense of the race for the White House.

Anthony will also be providing special coverage this week, delivering wall-to-wall analysis that explains these results in simple terms.

Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Rain can discourage people from going out to vote, and when the polling is neck and neck, everything matters.

In this video, BBC's Darren Bett gives us the voting day forecast, with a spotlight on whether it will be rain, sunshine or something in between for the seven key battleground states.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

Over the coming days, you're likely to hear and read a lot about the power of the "Latino" vote, and the impact they'll be having on the outcome of the election.

It's important to note, however, that the Latino block is by no means monolithic, coming from disparate countries of origin and with different concerns.

In fact, one of the chief complaints made against both parties has been that, historically, national-level candidates approach them with an all-encompassing brush.

Some communities - notably Cuban-Americans in South Florida, or Venezuelan-Americans - have traditionally leaned towards the Republicans. Trump's rhetoric of creeping "socialism" finds a receptive audience in these communities, large parts of which were forced to flee repressive regimes in their homelands.

Even the Mexican-American vote - by far the largest in the US - is very diverse. Mexican-American voters in, let's say, Chicago or California, have different concerns from ones in Arizona or Texas.

Several swing states - particularly Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and even Georgia - have large Latino populations in which even modest Republican gains could ultimately help propel Trump to a win.

BBC Monitoring

As Donald Trump has spent the last hour campaigning on his plans for the country's southern border, it's perhaps not surprising that no other region in the world will be following the election more closely than Latin America.

While the region may have slipped down Washington’s priorities list in recent decades, the US looms large in the view of governments and nations south of the border, from Mexico to Argentina. That is true whether the relationship is hostile or friendly.

And US policies are an issue in Latin America, with real and lasting impacts.

Mexico - which with Canada is intertwined in a strategic free trade deal with the US - is most likely to feel the impacts of policy changes resulting from the US election.

Mexicans are bracing themselves for potentially tougher and more nationalistic US immigration, security and trade policies, certainly if Donald Trump wins, but also possibly from Kamala Harris too.

This is also true with every other nation in Latin America and the Caribbean – which fall within the sphere of US influence – so the US election is likely to be followed as closely as if it was taking place on home soil.

Donald Trump is beginning his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina by returning to his go-to talking point this election - illegal immigration.

He expresses with remorse the millions of US-Mexico border crossings that have happened under President Biden's administration and says that "many of these people are murderers". BBC Verify has already fact-checked these misleading claims, here.

Trump then blames Mexico for the immigration and says: "If they don't stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I'm going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America."

He continues: "You're the first ones I've told that to, congratulations North Carolina."

The economy is the number one issue for voters this election, and polls suggest voters favour Trump to handle it.

Raising tariffs has been Trump's main policy offer to improve the economy, a move which he says will protect American manufacturing but which economic experts warn would drastically raise prices in the US.

Ione Wells
Reporting from Michigan

This late in the day, neither candidate is whipping new policies out of the bag. Instead, Donald Trump - like Kamala Harris - is focusing on messages we've heard before to cast a final pitch to undecided voters and energise his core base to turn out.

For him, this means centring on immigration, national security, and asking voters if they "feel better off than they did four years ago" in his rallies today.

He's also repeatedly used final rallies to accuse his opponents, without evidence, of cheating and fraud.

Critics say he is laying the ground to challenge the result if he does not win.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Pennsylvania

Image source, Getty Images

While Pennsylvania's Latino population is smaller than that of some other swing states - such as Nevada or Arizona - it could ultimately be the voting bloc that can swing the election to the Democrats or Republicans in the vital state.

According to the 2020 US Census, there are more than a million Latinos in Pennsylvania - a figure that state authorities say rose to over 1.1m by 2022.

Of the total, more than 580,000 are eligible voters, a large portion of whom are Puerto Rican.

It's a demographic that both parties are actively trying to court. While Democrats have traditionally been favoured by Latinos in the state, the Republicans have been consistently improving their performance among the electorate every election.

On Sunday, for example, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes was in a heavily Latino part of North Philadelphia, where she told Puerto Ricans that the recent "garbage" joke at a Trump rally in New York was emblematic of the former president.

At Trump's rally in Allentown last week, where more than half of people identify as Latino, Puerto Rico shadow senator Zoraida Buxó tried to make the case that the Republican campaign aligns with Puerto Rican values of "family, faith, economic freedom and deep, deep love of country".