The Latest: All eyes on Pennsylvania as candidates spend final day campaigning there

The presidential campaign comes down to a final push across a handful of states on the eve of Election Day.

Kamala Harris will spend all of Monday in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. Donald Trump plans four rallies in three states, beginning in Raleigh, North Carolina and stopping twice in Pennsylvania with events in Reading and Pittsburgh, then ending in Michigan

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here's the latest:

Trump arrives in Reading, Pennsylvania, for his second rally of the day

Trump has drawn thousands of supporters to Santander Arena, but once again, many of the venue’s 7,200 seats remain unfilled more than an hour after he was scheduled to take the stage.

The campaign has hung a large American flag near the back of the arena, blocking view of the back sections, behind the press riser, which are empty.

Man arrested after punching Illinois election judge

A 24-year-old man was arrested after punching an election judge at a polling place in Orland Park, Illinois, southwest of Chicago.

The man on Sunday walked past people waiting in line to enter the voting area at about 11 a.m. at the township office, Orland Park police said Monday in a news release.

An election judge posted at the entrance told him to go to the back of the line and wait his turn. After the man refused, he tried to push past a second election judge and was prevented from entering, police said.

The man yelled profanities and hit at least one of the election judges, police added.

When officers arrived, he was being being restrained by several other people.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved two counts of aggravated battery to a victim over 60, two counts of aggravated battery in a public place — both felonies — and misdemeanor resisting arrest and disorderly conduct against the man. He was jailed overnight.

Harris to spend Tuesday calling into drive-time radio shows

Campaign communications director Michael Tyler told reporters Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris was going to “end this campaign the way she started it: speaking directly to the voters that are going to decide this election.”

Tyler said Harris would do radio interviews in all seven battleground states to make sure “that those final voters who are on their way to work, on their way home, taking a lunch break, understand the stakes” of the election and where Harris intends to take the country if elected.

RNC sues Milwaukee Elections Commission over limits on poll watchers

According to the Republican National Committee, the elections commission announced over the weekend that certain precincts will be limited to only one Republican and one Democratic poll watcher on Election Day.

The commission hasn't disclosed which precincts will be affected, according to the RNC.

The lawsuit seeks an emergency injunction prohibiting the commission from implementing or enforcing any arbitrary restrictions on the number of observers. The commission denied in a statement that observers will be arbitrarily limited but said they are subject to “reasonable limitations” under state law.

Republican observers will be allowed on Election Day, the commission added.

‘Let’s get to work — 24 hours to go’

“Let’s get out the vote,” Vice President Kamala Harris chanted at her first event of the day in Pennsylvania, the Democratic nominee throwing her first in the air as she tried to fire up people about to knock on doors for her.

Harris spoke to her supporters at a get-out-the-vote event in Scranton, a key area in Pennsylvania that could go a long way to deciding whether she or former President Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania this year.

Polls have the state tied headed into Election Day.

“All right, let’s get to work — 24 hours to go,” Harris said.

Harris harkens back to campaign memories while in Pennsylvania

Harris, on the precipice of an Election Day featuring her name atop a major party’s presidential ticket, recalled the more humble kind of campaigning that started her political career.

“When I first ran for office as DA, I started out at 6% in the polls, so anyone who knows that is six out of 100. No one thought I could win. And I used to campaign with my ironing board,” she told supporters at an event in Scranton on Monday.

“I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” Harris added, recalling how she would tape posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out of the grocery store.”

“That is how I love to campaign. I don’t do it as much anymore, obviously,” Harris said, sounding wistful.

Harris was elected as District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003.

‘Are you ready to do this?’ Harris asks voters

Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off election eve with a get-out-the-vote event in Scranton, Pennsylvania, urging supporters who were about to knock on doors for her to “enjoy” the final 24 hours of her campaign.

“Are you ready to do this?” Harris yelled Monday, with a large handmade “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” sign behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner to her side.

Tables near the vice president were full of campaign literature, including door hangers that will be left on doors across the Scranton area. She urged supporters to understand “there’s a huge difference between me and the other guy,” referring to Trump.

Harris’ final day of campaigning will be about one state — Pennsylvania — with the Democratic nominee covering the commonwealth over four events. Polls have the candidates tied heading into Election Day.

“Over these next 24 hours, let’s enjoy this moment to knock on a neighbor’s door,” she said.

‘It’s a system,’ Trump says of the election

Trump appeared Monday on the podcast hosted by former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and sportscaster Jim Gray in which he said he feels “great” about the election and said he’s going up against “a system” with the Democratic Party.

“It’s a system. It’s just the way it is. And it’s very interesting to watch,” Trump said. “Let’s see if I can take down that system. I did it once, very successfully.”

The former president also noted how many rallies he’s doing in the final days, with three or four daily.

“It’s been an amazing experience for me,” he said. “I think we’re doing really well.”

‘It’s my civic duty’

Standing in line for Kamala Harris’ rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, was Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat who will vote for just the second time in his life.

Kessler, 54, said he switched parties after he began identifying with the Democrats’ support of gay marriage and abortion rights and sees Donald Trump as lacking integrity, wielding hateful speech and posing a threat to democracy.

For a long time, he didn’t vote, thinking the country “would vote for the correct candidate. And now that I’m older and much more wiser, I believe it’s important, it’s my civic duty and it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country which I supported for 22 years of my life."

Kessler voted for the first time in 2020 — for Biden.

More than 1.1 million Minnesotans have already voted, secretary of state says

At a pre-election briefing for reporters, Secretary of State Steve Simon said his wish for Election Day is for “high turnout and low drama.”

Minnesota often leads the nation in turnout, he noted, but Maine was No. 1 in 2022. He said Minnesota’s challenge in getting back to No. 1 is that other states have also upped their game.

“By the time Minnesotans are eating breakfast (on Wednesday), they should know all or substantially all of the results in Minnesota,” he said.

He noted that the counting will take longer in several other states because of different procedures, including some presidential battleground states.

Simon’s security chief, Bill Ekblad, said that despite warnings from federal agencies about efforts by “foreign and domestic bad actors” to disrupt the U.S. elections, “we are not currently aware of any, specific credible threats to Minnesota elections.”

Trump talks sports gambling, paying college athletes as he aims to attract young men to the polls

Former President Donald Trump says with the growing popularity of gambling in U.S. professional sports that corruption is something that can’t be avoided.

“Well, there will be corruption and the only question is, will it be massive corruption or will it be, you know, regular standard corruption,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with former NFL coach Bill Belichick and veteran broadcaster Jim Gray that aired Monday.

Trump added, “But there’s going to be corruption, and we’ll see how it works out.”

Trump’s campaign has been putting great effort into trying to get lower-propensity voters to turn up for him at the polls. The appearance on the podcast was just the latest effort to reach young male voters Trump hopes will be difference-makers for him.

Trump also made clear that he’s not a fan of a change in rules that allow college athletes to be compensated through brand deals and de facto salaries through donor-funded collectives.

Wisconsin official says the large number of absentee ballots will likely mean delays in vote counting

Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe told reporters during a teleconference Monday that she anticipates the large number of absentee ballots local clerks have received will likely lead to delays in tallying.

Wisconsin law prohibits clerks from counting absentee ballots before Election Day. As of Monday morning, local clerks have recorded more than 1.5 million returned absentee ballots, including nearly 950,000 absentee ballots voters cast in-person in clerks’ offices and other locations.

Wolfe added that election officials have been working for the last four years to head off claims of late-night ballot dumps, explaining clerks know exactly how many absentee ballots have been requested and returned.

44% of registered Michigan voters have already cast ballots, the secretary of state says

It’s the first presidential election since Michigan in 2022 added days of early voting to the calendar.

“Some (were) waiting in line for up to an hour,” said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who noted that more than 189,000 people voted Sunday. Voters have cast ballots either in person or with an absentee ballot.

The presidential campaigns clocked 80 visits to Pennsylvania since March

The presidential campaign is coming to a close.

As with previous elections, the candidates have largely stuck to the swing states they’ll need to try to reach the 270 electoral votes required to claim the presidency. The U.S.’s unique Electoral College method of electing the president forces the candidates to appeal to voters in the states that could go either way, rather than trying to win the nation’s popular vote.

Seven states are considered in play this year, representing less than 20% of the U.S. population. Of those, the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets have focused most on Pennsylvania, the swing state with the greatest number of electoral votes.

Going back to March, when President Joe Biden was the presumed Democratic nominee, here are the number of visits the campaigns have made to those seven states through Monday, according to Associated Press tracking of the campaigns’ public events:

▶ For a detailed look at all campaign visits by the presidential tickets, see the AP’s interactive map

Walz at first event of election eve: ‘The thing is upon us now, folks’

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ratcheted up the pressure on the next 24 hours at his first event of election eve Monday, arguing that keeping former President Donald Trump out of the White House would have implications far beyond the next four years.

“The thing is upon us now, folks,” Walz said at a rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin. “I know there is a lot of anxiety, but the decisions that are made over the next 24-36 hours when those polls close, will shape not just the next four years, they will shape the coming generations.”

Walz was joined at his event by his wife, Gwen, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Oklahoma officials say power restored after storms knock out power at some polling places

Election officials in Oklahoma say power was restored Monday to some polling locations that lost electricity after a second round of storms battered the state with high winds and heavy rain.

There were no reports of damage to polling locations after a series of storms, including tornadoes, rolled through Oklahoma on Sunday and State Election Board spokesperson Misha Mohr said election officials had been in contract with power companies to prepare for any unforeseen problems that might occur.

Mohr said each of Oklahoma’s 77 county election boards also have backup polling places in case of power outages or damage from severe weather.

‘I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos’

German Vega was at New York’s Madison Square Garden when stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” during a Trump rally.

“It was absurd,” said Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading, Pennsylvania, and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”

Vega, who describes himself as “pro-life,” voted for Trump in 2020 and he plans to vote for him again tomorrow. He couldn’t attend the Trump rally in Reading because he had to work, but he said his 18-year-old son, who’s still undecided, planned to be at the rally in the mostly Latino city.

The comments at the New York Trump rally also included lewd and racist comments about Latinos, Jews and Black people. But Vega said he sees them as part of a strategy to court votes.

“It didn’t surprise me,” he said. “From both sides, but especially from the Republicans, there’s been a lot of racism to get the white vote.”

How has voter turnout been in North Carolina counties affected by Hurricane Helene?

North Carolina’s elections chief says voter participation so far in the western counties harmed by Hurricane Helene’s historic flooding continues to outpace turnout statewide.

State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said in a news conference Monday that 59% of registered voters from the 25 counties affected by the storm have cast ballots through traditional absentee voting or at early in-person voting sites that closed Saturday afternoon.

That compares to the 57% turnout — or 4.45 million ballots cast — so far statewide, according to board data.

“That’s just a testament to the dedication and the extraordinary effort by the election officials, by our partners at the state, local and federal levels to make sure that even when devastation struck, that that did not stop voting,” Brinson Bell said.

More than 2,650 polling places will be open on Election Day. Brinson Bell said seven sites in four counties among the hardest hit by Helene are temporary tents that were acquired with help from emergency officials. She says there’s road access to every one of those sites.

Trump is hailing his relationship with the US island territory Puerto Rico

That’s two weeks after a comedian who spoke at a Trump rally in New York referred to it as a “floating island of garbage.”

“I mean Puerto Rico is great,” Trump said Monday at a rally in North Carolina on the last full day of campaigning.

“We helped Puerto Rico more than anybody,” he told his Raleigh audience.

Commedian Tony Hinchcliffe, among the speakers at the Madison Square Garden rally, known for his podcast “Kill Tony,” said: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

Puerto Ricans cannot vote in the U.S. election, but there are more people of Puerto Rican descent in the United States who can than are of voting age who populate the island. In the battleground states, Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County is home to the state’s largest population of Puerto Rican voters.

In September 2020, after criticism for a slow response to Hurricane Maria in 2017, Trump released $13 billion in assistance to repair years-old hurricane damage. It took Trump two weeks to visit the island after the storm and he was criticized for an appearance where he threw rolls of paper towels into a crowd.

Harris supporters will be taking the campaign to the phones on Election Day

Kamala Harris supporters are banding together on Election Day for what they’re claiming will be the largest phone bank operation of all time.

Participants will include celebrities such as John Legend, Jessica Alba, and Bradley Whitford, as well as politicians including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Rep. Eric Swalwell.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is also participating in the initiative, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET. “Let’s work together to make important calls to swing states and get out the vote!” he posted on social media.

Georgia top elections official: The state is prepared for Tuesday’s election and he’s confident things will go smoothly

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters during a news conference at the state Capitol on Monday that the state’s election will be “fair and fast and accurate.”

Raffensperger acknowledged that the eyes of the nation will be on Georgia and six other battleground states and the coming days could bring “some extra drama from fringe activists.”

“They’re certainly dramatic, aren’t they?” he said. “Whatever they say or do, we know this to be true: Here in Georgia, it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

By the end of early in-person voting Friday, more than four million people had already cast ballots in Georgia, either in person or by mail. That’s more than half of the state’s active voters.

Trump says he’d impose tariffs on Mexican imports if they don’t stop migrants and drugs from entering the US

Trump announced that if elected, he would inform Mexico’s new president Claudia Sheinbaum on day one that she must stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the U.S. or risk a 25% tariff on Mexican imports.

Mexico is the United States’ main trading partner.

“If they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I am going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America,” Trump announced to supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Trump hasn’t met Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former Mexico City Mayor, but said he heard she was “a very nice woman.” He often speaks about how he threatened Mexico’s former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador similarly to adopt his “Remain in Mexico” policy, where migrants have to wait south of the U.S. border to apply for asylum. Biden ended that program.

Conservative media host Megyn Kelly plans to join Trump at a campaign rally in Pittsburgh

That comes nine years after Trump criticized the one-time Fox News host as “nasty.”

Kelly’s scheduled appearance at Trump’s Monday evening rally scheduled for PPG Paints Arena marks a long way from the first debate of Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he criticized Kelly, a moderator for the event, as being harsh toward him, using sexist language.

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her – wherever,” Trump told then-CNN anchor Don Lemon after the August 2015 debate in Ohio.

Today, the conservative podcaster, famous for her pointed questioning of Trump in 2015, has said she’ll vote for Trump.

Kelly’s appearance with Trump comes as early voting suggests a gender gap that favors Democrat Kamala Harris and the work Trump needs to do to shrink it.

Harris gives a thumbs-up as she heads to Pennsylvania

Asked how she was feeling as she boarded Air Force Two for a flight to Pennsylvania on Monday and one final day of campaigning before the election, Vice President Kamala Harris said “good” and flashed a thumbs-up.

Social Security becomes an effective angle for unions working on turnout for Harris

Unions knocking on doors on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris are finding what they say is an effective line of attack against Republican Donald Trump — that he’ll defund Social Security.

The former U.S. president has said he would make Social Security income tax-free. That’s problematic because those revenues help to fund the program and the loss of that money means Social Security would be unable to pay out its full benefits in fiscal year 2031, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.

“That’s one of the big issues for our folks,” said Laura Dickerson, the United Auto Worker’s Region 1A director in Michigan. “People need to think about that they do not want to fully fund Social Security.”

The UAW has twice as many staff working on turnout compared to 2020 and 2016, enabling the union to directly contact all of its members and retirees and families of its members in support of Harris.

Trump seems to reference ‘Access Hollywood’ video during Raleigh event

Donald Trump seemed to reference the video that nearly sank his 2016 campaign as he expressed amazement at how two giant mechanical arms caught Elon Musk’s reusable rocket — “like you grab your beautiful baby.”

“See, I’ve gotten much better. Years ago I would have said something else. But I’ve learned,” Trump said, prompting laughs from his crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I would have been a little bit more risqué.”

Trump’s 2016 campaign was nearly derailed by the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he was caught bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.

On Saturday, Trump made a similar remark, saying that in the old days, he would have said the movement of the rocket-catching arms was “like you grab your ... girlfriend.”

Trump has been expressing amazement at Musk’s engineering feat in which mechanical SpaceX arms caught a Starship rocket booster after it returned to Earth.

Musk has spent tens of millions of dollars helping to elect Trump.

Adviser won’t rule out Trump declaring election victory before news outlets call race

Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller would not rule out the possibility that Trump once again might declare victory in the election before news outlets have determined the winner.

News organizations, including The Associated Press, will call the winner of the election when a candidate has won at least 270 Electoral College votes needed to be elected president.

Pressed by reporters Monday, Miller only said Trump “will declare victory when we’re confident we have 270 electoral votes that we need.”

In 2020, Trump falsely declared victory from the White House before the final result was known. Trump lost the 2020 election but has refused to accept it.

Trump rails on Harris and Biden over immigration

Trump took the stage in Raleigh, North Carolina, calling the Southeast state “ours to lose,” on a marathon final day of campaigning.

He began by railing against the Biden administration over immigration, attacking the Democratic president and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent, for crime he attributes to illegal immigration.

Trump sounded confident, telling his audience, “With North Carolina, I’ve always gotten there.”

“Here’s my only purpose in even being here today: Get out and vote,” Trump said, loudly but hoarsely.

After Raleigh, he's expected to head to Pennsylvania, perhaps the biggest prize on the electoral map, for rallies in Reading and Pittsburgh.

Trump: The presidential race is ‘ours to lose’

Trump has taken the stage to roaring applause in Raleigh, North Carolina — and the arena is now much fuller than it was an hour ago, with only a smattering of empty seats.

He sounds a little hoarse after a busy campaign schedule that will include another three stops later Monday.

Trump says of the presidential race: “It’s ours to lose.”

Top state election officials say Americans can ‘have confidence the election is secure’

The joint statement Monday by the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors said election officials have been working for four years to prepare for the Nov. 5 presidential election and have devoted “extensive time, energy and resources to safeguard America’s elections.”

They cautioned that “operational issues” could happen, such as polling places opening late or long lines at voting locations, but election officials have contingency plans to address these.

They also urged the public to be patient, saying “accurately counting millions of ballots takes time” and noting recounts may be needed for close races.

Conservative activists submit thousands of voter challenges in several Pennsylvania counties

More than a dozen counties in the presidential battleground of Pennsylvania have received bulk challenges from conservative activists to voters’ mail-in ballot applications that voting rights lawyers and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration say are illegal.

The deadline to challenge a voter based on their residency in Pennsylvania was Friday, but voting rights lawyers say such challenges must be individualized and be supported by credible evidence.

The challenges — to more than 4,000 voters total — are based on “theories that courts have repeatedly rejected and appear to be two separate, coordinated efforts to undermine confidence in the Nov. 5 election,” Shapiro’s Department of State said in a statement.

Many of those voters also received form letters from the activists urging them to cancel their registration. Some challenges target voters living overseas, while others target voters who appeared in the U.S. Postal Service’s change-of-address database.

Trump supporter says

there was ‘no way’ he would vote for Harris because of foreign policy issues

RALEIGH, N.C. — From what Noah Frederick, 23, has seen in the lead-up to Election Day, he thinks Trump is going to win the presidency. He attends Duke University as an electrical engineering student but cast his mail-in ballot for his home state of Pennsylvania about two weeks ago.

Something Frederick said surprised him is that several friends from his hometown of Pottsville who used to be more “Democrat-friendly” are now pro-Trump. His decision to cast his ballot for Trump came a few months ago when former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris.

“Their supporting (of) Kamala kind of tells kind of tells you all you need to know about her foreign policy and Trump’s,” he said.

Frederick said there was “no way” he would have voted for Harris because of foreign policy issues and the Biden administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘I feel like Trump already beat Kamala. I feel like now we have to beat the people we can’t see’

RALEIGH, N.C. — A smattering of Trump’s supporters are once again wearing yellow and orange safety vests to his rally — copying the uniform Trump donned last week when he climbed aboard a garbage truck to draw attention to President Joe Biden’s comments calling his supporters “garbage.”

Among them was Trey Gainey, 21, a barber from nearby Clinton.

“Joe Biden called us supporters ‘garbage’ so I decided to show up like I saw Trump do,” he said as he waited for the former president to take the stage in Raleigh.

Gainey, who said he cast his ballot for Trump on the first day of early voting, said he’s confident Trump will emerge the winner, but is worried about a nebulous force interfering.

“I feel like Trump already beat Kamala. I feel like now we have to beat the people we can’t see,” he said.

On the ground in Raleigh

RALEIGH, N.C. — There are plenty of empty seats at the Raleigh, North Carolina, arena where Trump is kicking off a busy last day of campaigning, with four rallies planned across three battleground states.

Trump was scheduled to take the stage at 10 a.m. at the J.S. Dorton Arena, a 5,000-seat venue with additional seating on the floor.

Trump has held events in North Carolina each of the past three days, underscoring the importance of a state he carried in both 2016 and 2020.

More people are still filing in so the arena could fill up more by the time Trump takes the stage.