US election 2016: Trump and Clinton vote as America heads to the polls – live

Trump cited voting machine malfunctions on CNN on Tuesday afternoon when he again refused to say whether he would concede the election if he lost. Donald Trump told the anchor he would have to “see reports” and hinted that those reports might contain evidence of fraud.

“There are reports that when someone votes Republican the entire ticket switches over to Democrat,” he said. “It’s the machines.”

Donald Trump
Donald Trump Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA
There is in fact a single report out of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, that between 5 and 6 machines had malfunctioned and switched a straight-Republican ticket to a straight-Democrat ticket. The problem is a familiar one, and is just as likely to switch votes from Democrat to Republican as otherwise. The board of elections in Lebanon said it had repaired the machines, which were brought to their attention by voters who saw that their vote had been registered incorrectly by the touchscreen voting machine.

“This happens every election,” said Stanford computer science professor David Dill, who has spoken out against voting processes that rely too heavily on technology, especially in the voting booth. “It’s admitted by the local officials, who say they’ve fixed the problem,” Dill said. “Touchscreen machines have a reported problem of vote-flipping. The usual explanation for this is that the machines are calibrated wrong so when you touch it in one place, it registers in another place.”

Jeremy Epstein of research organization SRI, who successfully lobbied to have the insecure WinVote system decertified last year, said the problem was familiar to him. “Sounds like screen alignment problems, which happen on the older [direct-recording electronic voting machines] DREs,” Epstein told the Guardian. “In earlier elections, this was blamed for flipping from D to R in some states.It may well be happening, but this is not a partisan problem, but old equipment.”

Dill concurred. “If you were going to defraud somebody on a voting machine, you wouldn’t tell them what you were doing.”

Other voting problems have been reported, but all appear to be the usual crop of errors in badly-designed machines: glitches that create long lines in historic Democrat stronghold Durham, North Carolina and a glitch in a system in coastal Cartaret County, North Carolina that will force polling place workers to recount paper ballots.

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9m ago
19:46
The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that the live voting data produced by VoteCastr is moving the markets.

The WSJ’s Paul Vigna explains:

It’s a first for traders, and for the news media. It has been a longstanding policy for mainstream media to not report on exit-polling data while polls are still open on Election Day, so as to avoid discouraging voters in western states from voting.

Today, though, websites Vice and Slate plan on providing what they are characterizing as “live” voting projections throughout the day.

To be sure, this is an experiment, and a controversial one. Regardless, the numbers are being put out there, and the market is noticing. With the Slate data showing Hillary Clinton leading in several key swing states, stocks have shot higher and bonds have fallen.

Right now, VoteCastr are giving Clinton a four point lead in the crucial state of Florida, with 48% of support vs Trump’s 44%. If the Democrats do claim Florida, it’s hard to see a Republican victory.

BUT (and it’s a big one), realtime polling forecasts are still somewhat experimental. If early voters aren’t representative of the electorate, then their projections could be skewed, for example.

Updated at 7.49pm GMT
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13m ago
19:42
Adam Gabbatt Adam Gabbatt
It’s quite a scene at Trump Tower today.
Sajid Khan
Sajid Khan Photograph: Adam Gabbatt for the Guardian
On a normal day people can walk in and out easily, but when I was there earlier a row of 10 Department of Sanitation trucks lined the street in front of the building. Behind those was a row of metal barricades, and beyond those a group of heavily armed police officers.

Adam Gabbatt
(@adamgabbatt)
I’m sure we shouldn’t read too much into this but there is a row of 10 Sanitation Department trucks outside Trump Towe pic.twitter.com/VKBiirf6LG

November 8, 2016
Across the street, directly outside an Abercrombie and Fitch store, a space has been set up specifically for protesters. When I was there this morning was one man in it. His name was Sajid Khan.

“He’s not fit to be mayor even of a small village,” Khan, 67, said of Trump. “And he’s thinking of leading the country.”

Khan had brought two banners to the protest area. One of them was tied to a broom stick with blue rope and had a very length message on the front. It mostly discussed Trump’s mental health. People are actually allowed to go into Trump Tower, if they were prepared to brave the sanitation trucks, metal barricades, and police. And have their bag searched, and walk past a sniffer dog.

Perhaps as a result of those measures, the building was deserted. There were three women working behind the counter at the Starbucks earlier, although there didn’t seem much for them to do. One of the women said she had voted earlier that morning. I asked if she had plumped for Trump.

“I did not,” she said. “I’m not a fan.”

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17m ago
19:39
Artist Jeff Koons is #WithHer – possibly because Donald Trump couldn’t afford one of his sculptures.

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23m ago
19:33
Trump’s campaign in three minutes

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Bizarre road to the election: Trump’s campaign in three minutes
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33m ago
19:23
Complaint filed against Eric Trump over ballot photo

The Democratic Coalition Against Trump, an arm of the anti-Donald Trump Keep America Great PAC, has filed a complaint with the New York State Board of Elections after the Republican presidential nominee’s son, Eric Trump, tweeted out a picture of his filled out ballot.

The tweet has since been deleted, but was a violation of a century-old New York state law that prohibits outside documentation of ballots. The law has been interpreted to include cell-phone shots and selfies.

“Once again the the Trump family has acted like the laws don’t apply to them,” said Scott Dworkin, the coalition’s senior director. “When another celebrity did the same thing, he was vilified by the media. We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to Eric Trump’s serious misstep.”

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40m ago
19:16
Speaking on Fox News this afternoon, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that he’s “going to have to see under what circumstances” he will accept the results of today’s presidential election.

Trump continued, saying that he wants “things to be very smooth,” regarding a transition of power, adding: “I was very good at history.”

Updated at 7.19pm GMT
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50m ago
19:06
Tom Dart Tom Dart
It is 511 days since Donald Trump made immigration a core campaign issue when he declared his candidacy saying that he would make Mexico pay for a “great, great, wall” on the border.

Donald Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Donald Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Photograph: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images
Then, as today, the community center at the Sacred Heart Catholic church in downtown McAllen, Texas, eight miles from the frontier, welcomed mainly central American families detained for making unauthorized border crossings, processed by US authorities and released to join up with relatives elsewhere in the country and await court dates.

Some said today that fear of a Trump presidency had influenced the timing of their decision to flee violence and economic hardship in their home countries.

“There are very high numbers right now, we’re way over 300 a day, sometimes very close to 400 almost. Most definitely more than last year,” said Sister Norma Pimentel, who runs the shelter. “The traffickers cash in on the suffering and the fear of the families back home and they’ll use whatever it is that is present at the time to get them to come. They’re making money from their suffering, and so if right now it’s the election, tomorrow it’s something else.”

“Sí!” said Sandra with a smile when asked if she was familiar with Trump’s bid.

“I’ve heard he’s not going to help the Hispanics,” the 35-year-old from Guatemala said. She had travelled for 22 days with her two boys, aged seven and 16. “We are praying to God that he doesn’t win. That’s the big worry for a lot of us here,” she said.

As a drumbeat of rain pattered on the roof of a large tent holding 30 people, 20 of them children, Bialquin’s three-year-old son, wearing a soccer jersey, played with a toy truck. “We heard Trump wants to throw back all the immigrants and build a wall,” said the 21-year-old Guatemalan. She said her main concern was not politics but simply doing her best for her family.

“That’s the biggest worry, that we will be deported if he becomes president,” said Jose, a 41-year-old from Honduras. He lifted up a trouser leg to show a government-issued GPS bracelet around his ankle. “It’s a very good country,” he said, adding a caveat: “If Trump wins, this country will fall into some very bad times.”

He is eager to watch the results tonight, but that may be hard: the bus taking him to join up with cousins in Tennessee leaves at 9.45pm.

Updated at 7.17pm GMT
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1h ago
19:00
Happy election day from the Guardian’s newsroom! We brought cake.

Dan Roberts
(@RobertsDan)
Guardian news supremo @geordiedav is rightly pleased with his home baked contribution to our newsroom’s election night pic.twitter.com/Osc077shlE

November 8, 2016
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1h ago
18:50
Rachel Obordo Rachel Obordo
People on the borders in Mexico and Canada have been in touch with their views.
A house in Bloomfield, Vermont.
A house in Bloomfield, Vermont. Photograph: Herb Swanson/EPA
Mexico

Gerardo Ce says Mexicans are following the US elections as if it was one of their own:

People are wanting to know if the peso will be at an exchange of 17 or 25 per dollar by tonight.

Matt’s an American living in Tijuana and commutes across the border:

My Mexican neighbors are paying close attention to the election and have made sure to ask if I have voted. They sit out on the porch to discuss the election and are very well informed on the candidates and issues.

And Tom Webster thinks it’s all a waste of time:

People hate Trump, and they hate Clinton. Stein and Johnson are just as useless. The American people will turn out and vote for the candidate that will keep the other main one out… What a waste of time. No one wins regardless of which candidate wins.

Canada

Rick Stackhouse from Canada said:

Considering most Canadians live within 500 kilometres of the US/Canada Border, very fidgety today. It’s hard to believe, out of 319 million people, these two are the best they could put forward.

Jean V says she’s just so tired of it all:

I pray that Trump does not win but none of us up here are really convinced. Terrified to think what would happen if he does.

And Sam thinks it’s a shame Canadians can’t vote:

The entire family is surprised it’s come down to the line like it has. And coming from a right-leaning backwater swamp, the support for conservative candidates probably shouldn’t be surprising. If Canadians could vote in the big show this one would be a vote for Hillary.

Updated at 6.55pm GMT
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1h ago
18:37
The City of Angels, they call it.

Matt Novak
(@paleofuture)
This is the most LA thing ever. Apparently by entering my polling place I’m agreeing to be filmed for something called “Booty Queens” pic.twitter.com/tVDK33VSj2

November 8, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/nov/08/us-election-2016-polls-trump-clinton-results-live