US Presidential Elections: Dixville Notch splits first US Election Day vote 3-3

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump

In a presidential election that couldn't be closer, it seemed fitting that the first votes cast on the Election Day were evenly split, with three for Donald Trump and three for Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris supporters who came from US participate in puja in Harris's ancestral village in Tamil Nadu. Pic/PTI

IN PHOTOS: The historic US presidential elections saw a large number of voters nationwide

2 weeks agoPHOTO GALLERY

The tiny New Hampshire resort town, Dixville Notch, has a tradition that dates back to1960 for being the first in the nation to complete in-person voting.
After a rousing accordion version of the national anthem, the town's six voters began casting their ballots at the stroke of midnight and the vote count was complete 15 minutes later.

Residents of Dixville Notch cast their ballots, kicking off US election at midnight on Nov 5

538
Total electors, who are appointed by the parties and are almost always party officials or supporters

Harris and Trump tie 3 to 3 in Dixville Notch. Pics/AFP

How the US votes

How are votes cast?
In the US, no one is required by law to cast a vote. The US does not have a system of online voting. Voters are assigned polling locations within each district. Voters enter private polling booths to fill out their ballots.

Hand-marked ballots
Most voters in the US vote with hand-marked paper ballots. Typically, voters fill in an oval or square next to their preferred candidate's name. Nearly 70 per cent of registered voters live in jurisdictions that use hand-marked paper ballots.

Ballot-marking devices
Some jurisdictions provide ballot marking devices (BMDs) that allow voters to cast their votes on a digital device. The device then produces a paper record of the vote. About 25 per cent of registered voters use BMDs.

Direct recording electronic voting
A small number of voters cast their votes using a direct recording electronic (DRE) voting system, with which voters press a button or touchscreen to cast their votes, which then go directly into the computer system. Some DRE systems are connected to a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail printer, which produces a paper record of each vote that the voters can confirm before it is recorded in the computer. Five per cent of registered voters live in jurisdictions that use DREs for all voters.

How many people have already voted?
All US states allow voters to cast their ballots before Election Day. Mail-in ballots are the most common method of early voting. All except three states also allow in-person voting before Election Day. In Alabama, early voting started on September 11 as the state distributed mail-in ballots. As of Sunday, 77,317,453 people in the US had already cast their votes.

How does vote count work?
In the US, there is no federal system of counting votes, and the vote count is left to the states. Hand-marked paper ballots and ballots marked by BMDs are typically counted using optical scanners and then tabulated digitally to obtain a final tally. Different states have different methods of re-counting and verifying the final count. States have until December 11 to certify their election results.

What happens next?
The president is not elected directly by the popular vote but instead by the Electoral College. Under this system, each state has the same number of electors in the Electoral College as its number of seats in the US House of Representatives and Senate. The US has a total of 538 electors, who are appointed by the parties and are almost always party officials or supporters. To win, a candidate needs 270 Electoral College votes. These electors will meet on December 17 this year to cast the vote for president and vice president. All states except two operate a winner-takes-all system in choosing their electors, meaning all their Electoral College votes go to whichever candidate wins the most votes.

77,317,453
As of Sunday, people in the US had already cast their votes.

Candidates' names are seen on part of a mail-in election ballot in New York. Pic/PTI

What if there's a tie?

In the highly unlikely but not impossible event of a tie - 269 electoral votes each - the US House of Representatives would decide next president in what is known as contingent election. Each state's delegation in the lower chamber of Congress would cast one vote. A candidate must receive a majority of those votes to win.

Trump very narrow favourite: Political scientist

Prominent American political scientist Ian Bremmer has said that no result would surprise him in this close contest, though he views Trump as the "very narrow favourite." He further highlighted that some polls have shown Trump "surprisingly weak" in Republican-leaning states, adding that the minds of undecided voters and turnout operations by the two parties might eventually play the deciding role in the results. Bremmer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk advisory firm, and GZERO Media, a company providing intelligent coverage of international affairs. Bremmer said, "We view Trump as the very narrow favorite in this race, but this is a low-conviction view, reflecting the closeness of polling and polls over the weekend that showed him surprisingly weak in Republican-leaning states."

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