The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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 While it’s possible the election results could be known within hours and not days, the Democratic campaign is preparing for a much longer stretch — perhaps even an election “week” — without an outcome, these people said.

That plan could include several different speeches and venues for delivering them. Precisely what Harris says publicly and the backdrop for her remarks would depend on how Election Day and the rest of the week unfolds, the people familiar with the planning said.  

“Bottom line: we have to be ready for anything,” one of the people said.

The Harris campaign did not return a request for comment. 

The careful planning reflects the new reality presidential campaigns face after the drawn-out counting process in 2020, only heightened by how close the 2024 race appears to be and how long it could take for the final tallies to materialize in the key battleground states. 

Howard University is currently a leading contender for Harris’ election night headquarters, but no final decisions have been made. Other locations are being scouted as well, according to four of the people involved in the planning. Two of those people said that the D.C. convention center is one of the other options.

The idea of spending election night where the Harris campaign headquarters is located — President Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware — wasn’t a natural fit for the vice president, who is from California. She inherited the campaign and location of its headquarters from Biden when he dropped out of the race in July.

If a winner remains undeclared for days, it’s possible Harris could address the country multiple times, the people familiar with the planning said. If former President Donald Trump were to declare victory before the results are in, as he wrongly did in 2020, there would be a campaign strategy for handling that, they said.

The Harris campaign is also preparing for possible legal challenges that could end up deciding the race and has been assembling a team of lawyers to handle the potential battle with Trump’s attorneys, one of the people familiar with the planning said. 

Harris aides are also bracing for the possibility that Trump could lose but then seek to overturn the results through the courts, this person said. 

Though there are preparations developing behind the scenes, Harris aides don’t expect the vice president to talk about these various scenarios on the campaign trail because they don’t want to depress voters with the idea that their ballots could ultimately be discounted somehow by a legal outcome.  

“People need to go out and vote. You don’t want people thinking about legal challenges,” one Harris aide said. 

Beyond the length of time it took to call the election in 2020, the Harris team is also looking to lessons from the 2000 election as a guide and hoping to avoid a very protracted battle. 

As a trained attorney, Harris herself has thought about how Trump could react in various scenarios, one Harris aide said. 

And as the vice presidential nominee last cycle, she had a front row seat to how the process played out when Trump lost but repeatedly claimed he won. That began with Trump declaring himself the winner during remarks at the White House in the overnight hours of Election Day.

Biden, for his part, also spoke briefly on election night, slightly before 1 a.m. He appeared from Wilmington, Delaware, and urged Americans to be patient as the nation awaited results. 

“We feel good about where we are, we really do,” Biden said at the time. “We’re gonna have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished and it ain’t over until every vote is counted.”  

Biden then spoke several more times that week, both to reporters and to the nation, saying he was “confident” he and Harris would be declared the winners once all was settled but said they were still waiting for a final call. 

Once that happened on Saturday, four days after the election, Biden and Harris both delivered victory speeches from Wilmington.

NBC News’ Peter Alexander and Tara Prindiville contributed.

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“If something seems off, it probably is,” Dawson warns in the video spot, shared exclusively with NBC News. 

Other celebrities featured in the video include Chris Rock, Laura Dern, Michael Douglas, Amy Schumer and Jonathan Scott delivering the message that Americans should rely on state secretaries of state for information about voting in the 2024 election and not to fall for unverified claims about alleged changes at polling stations.

The celebrities say Americans may receive a fake message claiming voting has been extended, or a polling location has closed or changed due to an emergency, or that new documentation is required to vote. “These are all scams designed to trick you into not voting. Don’t fall for it,” the celebrities say.

At the end, the video reveals that some of the Hollywood stars are mere deepfakes, with their voices and images superimposed on other actors.

The public service announcement, organized by the nonpartisan group RepresentUs and set to appear on YouTube, comes amid growing concern that artificial intelligence technology could be used to confuse Americans about the time, place or manner of voting at their local polling places.

False information and other dirty tricks aimed at discouraging people from going to the polls is nothing new. But increasingly advanced A.I. tools could make it easier to confuse and deceive voters with video and audio that looks and sounds plausible, experts say.

“We’re not going to stop this from coming into existence,” said Miles Taylor, one of the organizers of the campaign. “But what we can do is make people aware that this is the new spam, that this is going to be the type of thing they see all the time online that tries to deceive them, and to make sure that they don’t fall for that deception, especially in a critical period of democratic transition.”

In January, AI-generated deepfake robocalls mimicking President Joe Biden’s voice urged voters to stay home and not take part in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. And last month, a deepfake caller posing as Ukraine’s former foreign minister held a Zoom meeting with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland. 

If the technology “can be deployed against sitting U.S. senators effectively, then your average voter could be a potential target,” said Taylor, a former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration who resigned in 2019 and publicly criticized the former president.Taylor and other organizers said that as AI technology improves at a rapid pace, raising public awareness will be crucial to inoculating Americans against attempts to spread false information, especially during an election year.

Joshua Graham Lynn, CEO and founder of RepresentUs, said that using a light-hearted approach with celebrities offered a way to alert Americans to the issue without causing panic.

“It was really important on this particular issue to get the point across, to not freak people out, but to get them thinking about it,” Lynn said. 

All the celebrities involved “were enthusiastic about doing it because they want to get the message in front of voters,” Lynn said.

Instead of trying to mimic a nationally known figure, the effort to mislead voters could try to use a deepfake to persuade a voter that they are hearing from a local election official or a church leader, experts and former election officials say. 

“You could make quite a lot of havoc just by hitting a number of precincts across the country, and because it’s not a known individual, it would be a little harder to verify quickly,” said Kathy Boockvar, the former secretary of state in Pennsylvania.

Organizers of the campaign ran simulations over the past year to try to anticipate what might happen in this year’s election with AI-powered tools. “The most alarming scenarios were the ones where deep fake technologies were used to target local voters and to try to deceive them about their right to vote,” Taylor said.

The campaign does not attempt to tackle or fact-check the flood of false information circulating this election cycle, from candidates, commentators, deepfakes or other means. Instead, it focuses on verifiable, concrete details about when, where and how Americans can cast ballots on Election Day, Lynn said.”No one should come between an American and their vote,” Dawson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it’s safe to say people are going to try.”

To assist understaffed state and local election offices in handling the onslaught of false information, including deepfakes, a nonpartisan coalition of more than 70 nonprofits have organized to help election authorities identify and debunk false information about voting before it goes viral. 

Efforts to mislead Americans about their ability to vote may have already begun, according to rights groups.

Last week in Wisconsin, voting rights advocates asked state and federal authorities to investigate anonymous text messages that seemed aimed at intimidating college students from voting. 

College students in Wisconsin are permitted to register to vote either at their home or their school address.

In the 2020 election, U.S. authorities accused Iran of sending emails to Democratic voters in multiple battleground states aimed at intimidating them into voting for then-President Donald Trump. The emails falsely claimed to be from the far-right group Proud Boys and warned the recipients that “we will come after you” if they didn’t vote for Trump. It’s unclear to what degree it had any effect. Iran has denied trying to interfere in U.S. elections.

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Ysabel Jurado, a candidate for LA Council District 14, is addressing the backlash she received after her comments during a meet and greet with constituents at Cal State Los Angeles. In the recording, a student asks the councilmember hopeful what her stance on the police force is, and what her thoughts are on Councilmember Kevin De Leon’s funding for overtime for officers.

In response, Jurado is heard saying, “What’s that rapper’s? F— the police, that’s how I see them.”

Jurado issued a statement clarifying why her beliefs are shaped in that manner.

“In a meeting with students at Cal State LA, I quoted a lyric from a song that’s been part of a larger conversation on systemic injustice and police accountability for decades,” she said, referencing an NWA song. “But it was just a lyric — and I’m proud to be accessible to young people and students, listening to their concerns and treating them like the future leaders they are. That’s something my opponent has failed to do.”

Read below for Jurado’s full statement.

Some constituents expressed they thought Jurado’s response was crass.

“I just thought it was very immature,” said Margarita Amador, a resident of District 14. “Not only insulting LAPD, but law enforcement in general.”

Others didn’t think much of the candidate’s choice of words.

“I hear that every day from young people,” said Carlos Montes, another resident of District 14. “They wear little baseball caps with ‘FTP’ on it.”

In response to Jurado, LAPD Chief Dominic Choi issued a statement decrying her sentiments.

“Hearing the words ‘f— the police,’ is disappointing and diminishes the hard work and dedication of the men and women of the LAPD,” Choi said in his statement. “This divisive language only serves to erode what should be a positive and collaborative relationship between the police and the people we serve. Every day the men and women of the LAPD put their lives on the line to keep the people of Los Angeles safe, and I wish more people valued their sacrifice”

Incumbent candidate De Leon also denounced his opponent’s remarks.

“Those comments are simply disrespectful,” he said in a statement. “I stand where I’ve always stood, 100% behind our frontline officers who go out every day risking their lives to protect Angelenos across our city.”

Two years ago, De Leon was embroiled in his own scandal after a conversation between him, then-council president Nury Martinez and former councilmember Gil Cedillo was leaked. The recording included racist remarks against Indigenous Mexican immigrants and Councilman Mike Bonin’s son.

Jurado’s full statement below:

In a meeting with students at Cal State LA, I quoted a lyric from a song that’s been part of a larger conversation on systemic injustice and police accountability for decades. But it was just a lyric — and I’m proud to be accessible to young people and students, listening to their concerns and treating them like the future leaders they are. That’s something my opponent has failed to do.

My commitment to public safety remains as strong as ever. Let’s focus on what matters, as laid out by the LA Times last week: our city is teetering on the edge of a fiscal emergency. We’re in this mess because of reckless decisions, including massive payouts for police misconduct. The result? A city broke, unable to fix busted sidewalks, broken streetlights, or trim trees—services that keep us safe and whole; services that we desperately need. The safest cities in America invest in parks, recreation, youth development, and public infrastructure—departments that my opponent has voted to gut down to less than 1% of the budget.

When I’m elected, I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and fight for the services and departments that keep us safe, healthy, and whole. It’s not enough to be tough on crime — we’ve got to be tough and smart, and operate with the fiscal responsibility necessary to fix our lopsided budget. And I’m prepared to work with whoever I need to—whether it’s the LAPD or colleagues I may not always see eye to eye with—because my priority is delivering for our district, plain and simple. Our campaign is about real solutions, not distractions.

Crime is always a hot button issue in a presidential race.

But with contradicting claims about crime rates from both sides, it can be difficult to discern whether crime rates are truly up or down. 

According to a Harvard-CAPS Harris Poll, crime is the number four most important issue for voters in the upcoming election.

Nationally, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been adamant that crime rates have declined under their administration. The White House released a statement last month saying violent crime is at a near 50-year low, according to new FBI data. 

But former President Donald Trump has pushed back against the Biden-Harris administration with claims that crime has risen since his time in office. In his September debate with Harris, Trump claimed “Crime here is up and through the roof.”

Trump has previously cited statistics to support his claims. At a rally in Philadelphia in June, Trump said “According to the much better National Crime Victimization Survey, there has actually been a 43% increase in violent crime since I left office.”

Both sides are citing statistics from credible sources, so how can they draw such different conclusions?

Politicians tend to cherry pick statistics

Trump and Harris have each cited statistics from national crime reports — the BJS’s National Crime Victimization Survey and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. These two resources are considered the standard for national crime data, but the numbers they collect vary slightly.

The FBI’s UCR relies on crime reports submitted from police agencies across the country, while the BJS’s NCVS relies on survey participants to report crimes committed against them. 

And although there are year-to-year disparities between the NCVS and UCR, both sources show generally the same trend: crime has steadily declined since the 1990s. 

Regardless of that clear national trend, politicians often highlight statistics that benefit their campaign.

"Depending on where you stand, the campaign has decided which prime reporting method you’re interested in," says Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.

The 2023 NCVS and 2023 UCR were released in September, and neither shows an increase in crime from 2022 to 2023. The NCVS shows crime remained mostly unchanged, while the UCR shows a 3% decrease in violent crime.

Although new data contradict Trump’s comments on the rise in crime, he has disregarded the need for data entirely, preferring instead to cite what comes down to "feelings." 

“You don't have to know anything about numbers. If you live in this country, you know crime has gone up," Trump said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Sept. 23.

Kevin Drakulich, associate director of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University, says that although many politicians take data out of context, Trump's claims about crime are particularly harmful.

"I would hate to have to draw a false equivalency between how both campaigns are approaching the data in each of [Trump's] elections," Drakulich says. "It's not cherry picking to purely make up things."

Crime data is complicated

Politicians may take numbers out of context, but it's surprising that both sides can find reliable data to back their different agendas.

The reason behind these conflicting statistics may have to do with the data sources themselves. Although both the NCVS and UCR are considered credible sources for crime data, each has benefits and drawbacks.

The NCVS covers a wider breadth of crime than the UCR, as many crimes go unreported to the police. But murder is not included in NCVS results, as victims cannot respond to the survey. It also has a significant margin of error.

The UCR offers reliable estimates of crimes reported to the police. But in 2021, the FBI changed how it collects crime data. Many agencies were unable to submit data to the FBI and only 65% of the United States’ population was covered by the 2021 UCR. 

Since 2021, the FBI has solved this problem. In 2022, 93.5% of the population was covered by the UCR and in 2023, 95.2% was covered.

It's not uncommon for the two reports from different samples to differ in year-to-year crime rates.

Presidents don't command local police departments

Candidates on both sides can use complex crime data to debate how their administrations handled crime. But experts say the federal government isn't the only influence on crime trends.

"The Department of Justice can provide money that basically goes to local police departments," says Drakulich. "The federal government can influence that, but local police departments are not under the jurisdiction of the presidency."

Violent crime trends are driven by a variety of factors. Socioeconomic changes can cause crime to rise or fall. Between the Trump and Biden administrations, murder rates that spiked in 2020 were likely influenced by the pandemic.

Because there are so many factors that influence crime, different cities experience their own ebbs and flows in crime rates. Mark Bliss, a deputy chief of the Detroit Police Department, explains that the federal government can't cater to all police departments.

"Each department and each location has different wants and needs," says Bliss. "If the federal government is in line with that, then that's great. But if it's not, then we will continue to push what we have to do to keep our specific community safe."

Detroit, which once had a crime-ridden reputation, has seen a massive decline in violent crime. Bliss credits some of this decline to resources provided by the federal government.

He says federal agencies like the FBI, DEA and and ATF often assist investigations, and federal grants have enabled the Detroit Police Department to purchase equipment they otherwise couldn't.

But these federal institutions don't change much from one president to the next.

"I think it would be fair to say that, you know, who's the president or political party, it really has very, very little to do with [federal resources for local policing] whatsoever," Bliss says. "It doesn't stop what I call 'the basics of policing.'"

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Though former President Donald Trump visited a Pennsylvania McDonald’s location on Sunday, the fast-food giant is trying to stay neutral in the presidential race.

“As we’ve seen, our brand has been a fixture of conversation in this election cycle. While we’ve not sought this, it’s a testament to how much McDonald’s resonates with so many Americans. McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President,” the company said in an internal message viewed by CNBC and confirmed by a source familiar with the matter.

Trump learned how to operate a fry cooker and work the drive-thru line during his short shift at a Feasterville, Pennsylvania, restaurant. He used the stunt as an opportunity to take more shots at his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump often accuses Harris of lying about working at McDonald’s for a summer in her twenties, but has offered no proof backing up the claim. Harris has denied the accusation. McDonald’s and its franchisees don’t have all of their employment records for workers dating back to the early 1980s, when the 60-year-old Harris would have worked there, the company said in the Sunday memo.

“Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches,” McDonald’s said.

Both McDonald’s and the franchisee who operates the location emphasized that the chain opens its doors to “everyone.”

“As a small, independent business owner, it is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community,” franchisee Derek Giacomantonio said in a statement. “That’s why I accepted former President Trump’s request to observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald’s.”

Although McDonald’s publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, it has tried to portray itself as an apolitical brand to avoid alienating customers. It follows a broader shift in Corporate America away from politics or initiatives perceived as ideological.

A number of companies, including Ford, Lowe’s and Harley-Davidson, have walked back their diversity, equity and inclusion policies and practices this year.

And that’s a change that many Americans want; only 38% of U.S. adults believe that businesses should take public stances, down from 48% in 2022, according to a Gallup-University of Bentley study conducted this spring. 

But McDonald’s has already been involved with another controversy this election cycle.

In late May, several viral social media posts criticized the burger giant’s affordability, citing everything from an $18 Big Mac meal at a Connecticut location to charts that alleged the chain’s prices had more than doubled over the last five years. Republicans latched onto the controversy, tying a jump in McDonald’s menu prices to Biden’s economic policy in a bid to win over voters fed up with inflation.

To quell the controversy, McDonald’s U.S. President Joe Erlinger wrote an open letter and released fact sheets about the company’s pricing.

— CNBC’s Kate Rogers contributed reporting

Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning for president against Elon Musk at least as much as she is against former President Donald Trump, Mark Cuban said Monday, as he advocated for the Democratic nominee as the pro-business choice.

“It’s the Harris campaign versus Elon, not even versus Trump,” the billionaire investor and former “Shark Tank” host said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Cuban took a swipe at the Tesla and SpaceX CEO over Musk’s promise to give $1 million per day to the winner of a swing-state voter sweepstakes, calling it “innovative” and “desperate.”

But Cuban later predicted that if Harris wins, she “100%” could mend her relationship with Musk.

Cuban’s remarks were the latest volley between the two billionaires, who have taken on increasingly prominent campaign roles while ramping up attacks against each other.

Musk, who has contributed tens of millions of dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC, repeatedly mocked Cuban’s looks, after Cuban said that few other CEOs are backing the GOP nominee.

Cuban shot back on Thursday: “You can’t stop thinking about me @elonmusk Can you?”

“It’s ok. I understand. If I supported a candidate that was so incompetent I had to take over and fund their ground game, I would be looking for a distraction too,” Cuban added in the post on X, the social media platform Musk owns.

You can't stop thinking about me @elonmusk Can you ? It's ok. I understand.
If I supported a candidate that was so incompetent I had to take over and fund their ground game, I would be looking for a distraction too. https://t.co/2xkjac6fTB

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) October 17, 2024

Cuban called out Musk again Monday morning on CNBC.

Asked for his view on the latest polls, which broadly show a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump, Cuban said, “Nobody really knows, and so really it comes down to get out the vote.”

“And the crazy thing is, it’s the Harris campaign versus Elon, not even versus Trump,” said Cuban.

Musk, the world’s richest man, has indeed emerged as one of the Trump campaign’s most prominent surrogates, as well as one of the biggest spenders in the 2024 election. He has led get-out-the-vote efforts in the key swing state of Pennsylvania and given nearly $75 million to his America PAC between July and early September alone.

Trump now regularly boasts of having Musk’s support, and has suggested that the CEO could take on a prominent role in his administration if he wins the election.

Musk, in turn, is embracing his status as one of Trump’s top backers.

pic.twitter.com/psdFwVL1PF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2024

On Saturday, Musk said he would randomly give $1 million per day to registered voters who sign a petition for that PAC.

“It’s innovative and it’s desperate,” Cuban said of that giveaway on CNBC. “You only do that because you think you have to.”

Cuban conceded that a sweepstakes is “not a bad idea,” but he wasn’t convinced that it would work.

“It just as easily could backfire,” he said, “but you don’t know until you try.”

Cuban went on to deliver a multipronged argument for Harris as a better presidential candidate for small businesses and the economy while contrasting her with Trump.

He said that Harris has promised not to raise taxes on Americans making $400,000 a year or less, which Cuban noted is a group that covers most small-business owners.

Cuban, the founder of Cost Plus Drugs, also pointed to Harris’ focus on lowering health care and pharmaceutical prices by taking on pharmacy middlemen. He argued that those savings could offset inflation for households and small businesses.

“She has come out and talked about it. Donald Trump hasn’t said a word.”

He also argued that Harris’ approach to addressing illegal immigration would be better for businesses than the mass-deportation plan put forward by Trump.

“I sat in front of restaurant owners and I asked, ‘What would it be like if all of a sudden you’ve got a knock on your door and there was somebody from Stephen Miller squad asking you for the names and addresses and immigration status of everybody that works for you?'” Cuban said.

“That’s not how you can run a country.”

Cuban also repeated his criticisms of Trump’s vow to use sweeping tariffs as a main tool of both his economic and foreign policy. Cuban said it was “insane” that Trump proposed using tariffs to deter a Chinese incursion into Taiwan.

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

The campaign visit in the critical battleground state just over two weeks from Election Day was designed to troll Harris, who has talked about working at one of the fast food chain’s restaurants when she was younger. Without evidence, Trump has accused Harris of lying about the experience as a way to improve her working-class credibility.

Trump repeated his unsubstantiated claims Sunday.

“It was a big part of her resume that she worked at McDonald’s — how tough a job it was,” Trump said at the restaurant in Feasterville, Pennsylvania. “She … made the french fries, and she talked about the heat: ‘It was so tough.’ She’s never worked at McDonald’s.”

Harris spokesperson Ian Sams shot back in a statement to NBC News.

“When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie,” Sams said. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”

Harris, according to her campaign, worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, during the summer of 1983. She was a student at Howard University at the time and worked the register, as well as the french fry and ice cream machines.

Trump’s own love of fast food is well-documented. During a government shutdown in 2019, he famously served McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Domino’s pizza on silver platters to welcome and celebrate the national college football champion Clemson Tigers during their White House visit.

During his half-hour shift Sunday, Trump traded his suit jacket for an apron and received a brief tutorial from a fry cook. He then took a turn at the deep fryer himself, dropping two batches of potatoes into hot oil and waiting for them to cook. He mostly followed instructions, though he forgot to fully drain the oil from one batch and appeared to be more generous with the salt.

Trump marveled repeatedly about how the fries are packaged, with the aid of a scooper-like device.

“Never touched by a human hand,” he said at one point. “Nice and clean.” 

Trump then turned his attention to the drive-through window, filling several orders and chatting with customers as they came by in their cars.

“This is not a normal situation, is it?” he remarked, before assuring customers they would not have to pay for their food and bragging that he had made their fries himself.

“There will be no charge,” he said. “Trump is paying for it. … This is all on Trump, am I allowed to do that?”

Several customers called out Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan as they came through the line.

“I wouldn’t mind this job,” Trump said. “I like this job. I would come back and do it again.”

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The franchise was closed for normal business during Sunday’s visit, and it was not immediately clear how the drive-through customers served by Trump were selected. In a statement, the location’s owner and operator, Derek Giacomantonio, said that he decided to participate in the Trump campaign event because “it is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community.”

Trump also served up fries to and took questions from gathered reporters. He dodged directly answering whether the federal minimum wage should be raised.

“Oh, you’re very stingy with the product,” he said to an employee filling bags with fries. “Look at that. She’s a good worker. That’s the kind of people you want to have. She gave them one french fry for 30 reporters.”

Toward the end of his appearance, Trump was informed it was Harris’ 60th birthday.

“I think I’ll get her some flowers,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get her some fries.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• Mark Cuban speaks out against piece of Harris’ tax plan while campaigning for her
• 1 killed, 10 others injured in shooting at a high school-age party in Indiana
• U.S. investigating apparent leak of ‘top secret’ U.S. documents regarding Israel

If you think you may have registered to vote before, or want to make changes to your voting preferences, check your registration status here.

Decision 2024:

Decision 2024 Sep 13

Plan Your Vote

If you’ve recently moved or changed your name, you must re-register to vote by completing a new voter registration form.

Either way, it’s a good idea to ensure the Registrar of Voters has your correct mailing address.

If you have not previously registered, you can do so here:

To register to vote in California, you must be:

• A U.S. citizen
• A California resident
• At least 18 years old on or before the next election
• Not in state or federal prison for a felony conviction
• Not declared mentally incompetent by court action

The last day to register online or by mail to vote in the state of California is Oct. 21. If you miss the deadline, don’t worry. There’s still a way to vote in the November election. More details below and here.

Can I still register to vote if I miss the deadline?

Luckily, for those who miss out on registering to vote during the window, the state of California allows residents to register using what’s called conditional voter registration up until and on Election Day, but it must be done in person.

If you meet the criteria to become a registered voter, go to the Registrar’s office at 5600 Overland Ave., San Diego, or any vote center to register and to vote using a provisional ballot. Rest assured, your vote will still be counted once you’ve been verified as a registered voter.

You will also be registered to vote in any future elections.

“Bernie is radical left, and this one, Kamala, is further left,” Trump told the crowd at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. “And then, so you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore. We can’t stand you. You’re a s— vice president.”

Trump added the catchphrase from his bygone television show “The Apprentice” to cheers: “Kamala, you’re fired,” he said. “Get the hell out of here.”

Trump told the crowd that profanity helps him put emphasis on his arguments, but the more pointed attack also underscores a recent heightening of personal invective in a tight race that is in its final weeks. Trump regularly insults Harris’ intelligence, referring to her as “not a smart person” or having a “low IQ.” At a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, he called her a “horrible person” and said he didn’t want to be nice.

Harris, campaigning in Atlanta on Saturday, ripped Trump for meandering in his public remarks. “He tends to go off script and ramble and generally for the life of him cannot finish a thought,” she said. “And he has called it the weave. But I think we here call it nonsense.”

Earlier in the day, in Detroit, Harris expounded on her case that Trump is not fit for the presidency.

“He’s becoming increasingly unstable and unhinged,” she said. “The American people are seeing it, witnessing it in real time. The American people deserve better than someone who seems to be unstable.”

Trump spent 12 minutes at the beginning of his roughly 90-minute speech telling stories about Palmer, the late professional golfer for whom the airport was named. At one point, he suggested that Palmer had unusually large genitalia.

“He was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there they said, ‘Oh, my God. That’s unbelievable,'” Trump said.

The Harris campaign quickly pounced on the anecdote. One Harris campaign spokesperson, Sarafina Chitika, suggested that someone should do a “wellness check” on the former president, while another, Matt Corridoni, posted on X that Trump was “Having a totally normal one.” In a statement, her campaign sarcastically chided Trump for focusing on “the issue most important to voters in this election: a deceased golfer’s … anatomy.”

An NBC News poll earlier this month showed Harris and Trump tied at 48% apiece nationally, while state polls in Pennsylvania and other battlegrounds have consistently placed them within the margin of error of each other.

Harris portrayed Trump Saturday as too tired for the job they both seek, a partisan reversal of Republican claims that President Joe Biden is incapacitated. Trump, for his part, called Biden “mentally deficient” Saturday.

Biden dropped out of the race this summer and helped Harris lock down the Democratic nomination with his endorsement after he stumbled badly in a debate against Trump.

“Now he’s ducking debates and canceling interviews because of exhaustion,” Harris said. Trump canceled an interview with NBC News’ senior business correspondent Christine Romans that was scheduled to tape on Monday; his campaign said it would reschedule but had not yet done so.

He also backed down from a CNBC interview and a planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event in recent days.

On Friday, during an exchange with reporters in Michigan, Harris took a cleaner swing at Trump over his energy level.

“Being president of the United States is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world,” Harris said. “And so, we really do need to ask if he’s exhausted being on the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.  More from NBC News:

• Harris goes to church, highlighting the absence of religion in the 2024 campaign
• Black men are a coveted — somewhat movable — voting bloc. Seven told us how they plan to vote
• Harris has no current plans to campaign with Biden before Election Day

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday railed against fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, who has been vigorously campaigning for his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Mark Cuban is a Loser,” Trump wrote in a Saturday Truth Social post. “Wouldn’t take his phone calls anymore while at the White House, and he went rogue. A weak and pathetic ‘bully,’ he’s got nothing going. Really low clubhead speed, a total non-athlete!”

Trump’s insults come several days after Cuban mocked the Republican presidential nominee’s tariff proposals at a Harris campaign rally.

“Let me just tell you, this man has so little understanding of tariffs, he thinks that China pays for them,” Cuban said of Trump at a Harris rally in Wisconsin on Thursday.

Trump has proposed a 20% universal tariff on all imports and an even higher 60% rate for Chinese imports. The plan has faced criticism from economists, who note that U.S. importers and consumers would ultimately shoulder the cost burden of such a hardline approach.

The animosity between two billionaires is a stark pivot from 2015 when Cuban praised Trump as the “best thing to happen to politics in a long time,” in a “Fox & Friends” interview.

Trump in turn thanked him for the kind words.

Cuban ended up endorsing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. And in the years since, his once-friendly relationship with Trump has only grown icier.

This election cycle, Cuban has become a regular Harris campaign surrogate as the vice president works to frame herself as a pro-growth capitalist.

The former “Shark Tank” host could have his sights on a government position of his own, repeatedly floating the idea of replacing Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, for example.

Meanwhile, Trump has enlisted Elon Musk as his own mega-billionaire campaign surrogate, fueling another rivalry with Cuban.

“You can be one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs literally of the last century and be a f—ing troll at the same time,” Cuban said of Musk in a Friday interview on “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists, according to NBC News.

“It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems,” said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, “a vital and flexible source of labor” to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.

Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants were living in the U.S. as of 2022, the latest federal data shows, down from an 11.8 million peak in 2007. The construction sector employs an estimated 1.5 million undocumented workers, or 13% of its total workforce — a larger share than any other, according to data the Pew Research Center provided to NBC News. Industry experts say their rates are higher in Sun Belt states like Florida and Texas, and more pronounced in residential than in commercial construction.

For Brent Taylor, home building has been “a very, very difficult industry the past few years, and it seems to only be getting worse.” His five-person, Tampa-based business hires subcontractors to perform all the labor, and if those firms’ employees “show up on my jobsite because they work for that company, I don’t know if they’re legal or not,” he said.

The labor pool is tight already, with the U.S. construction industry still looking to fill 370,000 open positions, according to federal data. If work crews dwindle further, “now I can only do 10 jobs a year instead of 20,” Taylor said. “Either I make half as much money or I up my prices. And who ultimately pays for that? The homeowner.”

Rhetoric or reality?

Trump hasn’t detailed how his proposed “whole of government” effort to remove up to 20 million people — far more than the undocumented population — would work, but he has made it central to his housing pitch. The Republican nominee claims mass deportations would free up homes for U.S. citizens and lower prices, though few economists agree. The idea has also drawn skepticism on logistical grounds, with some analysts saying its costs would be “astronomical.”

Doubts also run high among homebuilders that Trump would deliver on his promise.

“They don’t think it’s going to happen,” Stan Marek, CEO of the Marek Family of Companies, a Texas-based specialty subcontracting firm, said of industry colleagues. “You’d lose so many people that you couldn’t put a crew together to frame a house.”

Bryan Dunn, an-Arizona based senior vice president at Big-D Construction, a major Southwest firm, called “the idea that they could actually move that many people” out of the country “almost laughable.” The proposal has left those in the industry “trying to figure out how much is political fearmongering,” he said.

But while Trump has a history of floating outlandish ideas without seriously pursuing them — like buying Greenland — he has embraced other once-radical policies that reset the terms of political debate despite fierce criticism and litigation. That is especially true with immigration, where his administration diverted Pentagon money to build a border wall, banned travel from several Muslim-majority countries and separated migrant children from their parents.

Trump has emphasized his deportation pitch on the stump, at times deploying racist rhetoric like claiming thousands of immigrants are committing murders because “it’s in their genes.” This month he accused immigrant gangs of having “invaded and conquered” cities like Aurora, Colorado, which local authorities deny, saying they need federal assistance but want no part in mass deportations. Still, recent polling has found broad support for removing people who came to the U.S. illegally.

“President Trump’s mass deportation of illegal immigrants will not only make our communities safer but will save Americans from footing the bill for years to come,” Taylor Rogers, a Republican National Committee spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement, referring to undocumented people’s use of taxpayer-funded social services and other federal programs.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the former president’s remarks about genetics were “clearly referring to murderers, not migrants.”

Tobin said the NAHB has real concerns about the deportation proposal but is engaging with both campaigns. It has called on policymakers to “let builders build” by easing zoning and other regulatory hurdles and improving developers’ access to financing.

“The rhetoric on immigration, it’s at 11,” Tobin said. “We have to have a serious conversation in this country about immigration policy and reform, and we can no longer delay it.”

Marek, who has long advocated for more ways for undocumented people to work legally in construction, said reforms are decades overdue. As an employer, “I do everything I can to make sure everybody’s legal,” he said, even as the industry’s hunger for low-cost labor has created a shadow economy that he says often exploits the undocumented workers it depends upon.

“We need them. They’re building our houses — have been for 30 years,” he said. “Losing the workers would devastate our companies, our industry and our economy.”

‘The math is just not there’

There is evidence that foreign-born construction workers help keep the housing market in check. An analysis released in December 2022 by the George W. Bush Institute and Southern Methodist University found U.S. metro areas with the fastest-growing immigrant populations had the lowest building costs.

“Immigrant construction workers in Sun Belt metros like Raleigh, Nashville, Houston, and San Antonio have helped these cities sustain their housing cost advantage over coastal cities despite rapid growth in housing demand,” the authors wrote.

But builders need many more workers as it is. “The math is just not there” to sustain a blow from mass deportations, said Ron Hetrick, a senior labor economist at the workforce analytics firm Lightcast. “That would be incredibly disruptive” and cause “a very, very significant hit on home construction,” he said.

Private employers in the field have been adding jobs for the past decade, with employment levels now topping 8 million, over 1 million more since the pandemic, according to payroll processor ADP. But as Hetrick noted, “the average high school student is not aspiring to do this work,” and the existing workforce is aging — the average homebuilder is 57 years old.

Undocumented workers would likely flee ahead of any national deportation effort, Hetrick said, even though many have been in the U.S. for well over a decade. He expects such a policy would trigger an exodus of people with legal authorization, too.

“That’s exactly what happened in Florida,” he said.

Past as prologue

Last year, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, enacted a series of restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers. Many immigrant workers hastily left the state even before the policies took effect, with social media videos showing some construction sites sitting empty.

“These laws show that they have no idea what we do,” said Luciano, a carpenter who is originally from Mexico and has worked on residential builds across South Florida for the past decade.

“No one else would work in the conditions in which we work,” the 40-year-old said in Spanish, asking to be identified by his first name because he lacks legal immigration status, despite living in the U.S. for over 20 years. Workers on jobsites “have an entry time but no exit time,” often logging 70-hour weeks in rain and extreme heat, he said.

Taylor recalled fellow Florida builders’ panic at the time of the statewide crackdown but said he reassured them, “Look, just give it six months. We don’t have enough people to enforce it, so they’re coming back.”

Republican state Rep. Rick Roth, who voted for the measure, later conceded that Florida was unprepared for the destabilization it would cause and urged immigrant residents not to flee, saying the law “is not as bad as you heard.”

Some workers returned after realizing the policies weren’t being rigorously enforced, Taylor said: “Sure enough, now things are more normal.”

DeSantis’ office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

When Arizona in 2010 enacted what were then some of the toughest immigration restrictions in the country, Dunn was working in Tempe as an executive at a construction management firm. As the legislation rolled out, he said, “a lot of people moved away, and they just never came back.”

By the time much of the law was overturned in 2012, he said, “Arizona had a bad rap” relative to other states that “were a lot more open and just less of a hassle to go work in.”

Dunn, a Democrat, said he’s “definitely” backing Vice President Kamala Harris, but other construction executives sounded more divided. Marek, a “lifelong Republican,” declined to share how he’s voting but noted that “a lot of Republicans aren’t voting for Trump.”

Taylor also wouldn’t say which candidate he’s supporting but praised Trump’s ability to “get things done.”

“There are many other issues with the economy that we are fighting daily that have nothing to do with immigration reform,” he said. “I am not a one-policy voter.”

This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News:

• Harris focuses on winning over disaffected Republicans as the election draws near
• Barack Obama contrasts John McCain with Trump at Arizona rally
• Polls show an election that could be the ‘closest since Bush v. Gore’

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

After Musk pushed a debunked voter fraud conspiracy theory Thursday evening at a pro-Trump town hall event in Pennsylvania, he announced in an X post that he was doubling his financial offer for engagement with the petition, which had been set at $47. He said the deadline to sign the petition is Monday night, the day that Pennsylvania voter registration closes. 

“If you’re a registered Pennsylvania voter, you & whoever referred you will now get $100 for signing our petition in support of free speech & right to bear arms,” Musk wrote.

Musk initially launched the petition and referral offer in early October. His America PAC released the petition, which is in support of the Constitution’s First and Second amendments. For anyone who refers a registered swing state voter to sign it, Musk promised to mail a check. For the current offer, he said checks will be mailed to voter addresses on file in Pennsylvania. 

The program appears to avoid breaking campaign finance laws, which make it illegal to pay people to register to vote, because the payment is for signing the petition and referring registered voters to sign the petition, rather than for registration. 

However, Musk, the world’s richest person, has vocally urged swing state voters in Pennsylvania to vote for former President Donald Trump, saying Thursday that the 2024 election will decide the “fate of America” and “the fate of Western civilization.” 

Previously vowing to stay apolitical, Musk has sharply veered to support conservatives since taking over X, formerly Twitter. Over the summer, he endorsed Trump and has ramped up various means of support for the candidate. Recent disclosures show that Musk has donated $75 million to his own pro-Trump super PAC. 

Musk also joined Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and plans to continue hosting town halls in the state, which he said is the “linchpin” for the election, through Monday. 

On X, where he is the most-followed person with over 200 million followers, Musk has repeatedly pushed false and inflammatory claims on topics including immigration, free speech and voter fraud. 

Musk’s America PAC has also paid to run ads on Facebook and Instagram for voter registration in swing states. In August, the PAC collected voter data but only directed certain zip codes to an official way to register to vote, a move that courted significant controversy. Election officials in Michigan and North Carolina investigated whether the website was misleading voters, but Michigan said it hadn’t found any evidence of violating state campaign finance law. 

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• University of Alabama students charged after pledge was shoved and stepped on during alleged hazing incidents
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A proposal for the November election seeks to allow non-citizens to vote in the municipal elections.

What would Measure DD do?

If passed, the Santa Ana City Charter would be amended to allow non-citizens to vote in all Santa Ana municipal elections by November 2028.

The passage of Measure DD would also mean Santa Ana becoming the first city in the state to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in municipal elections.

What supporters say 

Proponents say Measure DD is a way to expand democracy.

Jonathan Hernandez, one of the Santa Ana councilmembers, said many of the non-citizens of Santa Ana are already contributing to the city. Measure DD would allow them another way to play their parts.

“Many of these residents are taxpayers. Many are homeowners, business owners. They have families in our city,” Hernandez said. “They have been contributing to OC making it the home it is.”

What opponents say

Those opposed to Measure DD say the proposal would violate the U.S. Constitution. 

Critics also argue city leaders rushed to get Measure DD on the ballot without much research or thought.

If passed, the city would open itself to lawsuits and litigation, according to Santa Ana City Councilmember David Penaloza, who estimates the legal challenges would cost the city at least half a million dollars. 

If Measure DD is approved, the city clerk would be required to run city elections, not the Orange County Registrar of voters.

“As a city we have to create an elections department. We have to hire an election official. We have to hire staff,  buy equipment,” Penaloza said. “What does that mean for a city that in the next four years is going to be in the red in the tens of millions of dollars?

But for some 4 million Californians who have yet to register to vote, Monday is the last day to register via mail.

Registration must be postmarked or submitted electronically by Monday, Oct. 21, 2024.

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Qualifications to register to vote

To register to vote in California, you must be:

• A United States citizen and a resident of California 
• 18 years old or older on Election Day
• Not currently serving a state or federal prison term for the conviction of a felony 
• Not currently found mentally incompetent to vote by a court

Qualifications to pre-register to vote

To pre-register to vote in California, voters must:

• Be 16 or 17 years old, and
• Meet all the prior requirements 

Applicants will automatically become registered to vote on their 18th birthday.

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Where to register to vote in California

Voters can register here via the online application. The application is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Voters can also register via pen and paper by visiting an elections office, library, Department of Motor Vehicles offices, or U.S. post office Paper applications must be delivered to an elections office before Oct. 21. 

Students studying abroad can register to vote using the Federal Post Card Application or by using the California Online Voter Registration system. 

Same-day voter registration

Same day or conditional voter registration is for Californains who miss the deadline to register to vote or update their voter registration information for an election to still cast their ballot. Eligible citizens can complete this process at a designated county elections office, polling place, or vote centers, found here. 

Members of the military, overseas voters and voters with disabilities should contact their local county elections office to learn about the conditional voter registration and available voting options. 

Safe Vote at home

Voters fearful for their safety and are eligible can enroll in the California Safe at Home voter program. Applicants are eligible to participate if they have experienced the following:

• Victim of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, human trafficking, child abduction, and elder or dependent adult abuse.
• Reproductive health care provider, employee, patient, or volunteer who has experienced threats of violence, violence, or harassment because of their affiliation with a reproductive health care services facility.
• Public entity employee/contractor who has experienced threats of violence, violence, or harassment because of their work for a public entity.
• Are a household member of a category listed above.
• Are in fear for their safety, or for the safety of a minor child or incapacitated adult.

Interested participants must visit their local enrollment agency after making an appointment. Completed applications are then sent to Safe at Home for review and approval.  

The deadline to register to vote with Safe at Home is Oct. 21. Voters who miss the deadline can still register up until Election Day, however, they will not be a confidential voter.

Am I already registered?

Voters can check here if unsure about their voting status. Voters can also check:

• Where they are registered to vote
• Check their political party preference
• Check their language preference for election materials
• Check the status of their vote-by-mail or provisional ballot
• Choose how they want to receive your state and county voter guides before each election
• Find their polling place.
• Find information for upcoming local and state elections.
• Find contact information for your county elections office.

Canceling voter registration

Voters currently registered to vote in California and would like to cancel your voter registration can complete the California Voter Registration Cancellation Request Form, and submit it to the county elections office.

Cancellation forms are available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese. 

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

The props include bond money for several projects, a change in how local governments get approval for those bonds and future money borrowing, the state minimum wage, rent control, prison labor, an existing tax for health-related funds and more.

Below, you’ll find summaries of each prop. Click on the prop number to learn more.

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Summaries of 10 California ballot props

• Proposition 2: Approval of bonds for public school and community college facilities.
• Proposition 3: Constitutional right to marriage.
• Proposition 4: Approval of bonds for protecting communities and natural lands from climate risks.
• Proposition 5: Allow for local bonds for affordable housing and public infrastructure with 55% voter approval instead of supermajority.
• Proposition 6: Eliminates constitutional provision allowing involuntary servitude in prisons.
• Proposition 32: Raises state minimum wage.
• Proposition 33: Expands local governments’ authority to enact rent control on residential property.
• Proposition 34: Restricts spending of prescription drug revenues by certain health care providers.
• Proposition 35: Provides permanent funding for Medi-Cal health care services.
• Proposition 36: Allows felony charges and increases sentences for certain drug and theft crimes.

How are propositions added to the California ballot?

There are two ways a ballot proposition can get on an election ballot in California.

First, the prop can be placed before voters by the California State Legislature.

Second, a prop can be added through a petition, which can be brought by anyone. If the petition receives enough signatures, it qualifies for the election ballot.

Important Nov. 5 general election dates

• Last day to register is Oct. 21
• Registered voters will get a vote-by-mail ballot. County elections office will begin mailing ballots by Oct. 7
• Ballot drop-off locations open Oct. 8. Click here for map of locations in Los Angeles County.
• Vote centers open for early in-person voting in all Voter’s Choice Act counties starting Oct. 26
• Election Day is Nov. 5.
• Vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by Nov. 12

The complicated health policy and funding bill asks voters to make permanent an existing tax on managed health care insurance plans.

It has support from health and medical groups, and both Democrats and Republicans, but opponents say the plan could backfire. The debate over Prop 35 has made for some unusual coalitions of support and opposition.

Here’s what to know about Prop 35.

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What Prop 35 would do

The ballot prop would make permanent an existing tax on managed health care insurance plans. If the plan is approved by the federal government, the money would provide revenue for Medi-Cal health services, California’s public insurance program for low-income residents and people with disabilities. The money would fund programs for speciality care, emergency medical services, family planning, mental health, prescription drugs and more. Lawmakers would not be allowed to use the tax revenue to replace existing Medi-Cal spending.

Supporters say Prop 35 is necessary to secure needed funding without a new tax hike for health services. As Medi-Cal has grown, the state needs a reliable funding source to protect and and expand access to care under the program used by 15 million Californians, supporters say.

Opponents say restrictions on how the money is spent would limit future lawmakers’ ability to balance the state budget. The California Pan-Ethnic Health Network statement in opposition to the prop said its revenue structure likely would not receive required approval from the federal government, which would leave a funding gap and few options for lawmakers down the road.

From the ballot

Below is the language included on the election ballot for Prop 35.

A YES vote on this measure means: An existing state tax on health plans that provides funding for certain health programs would become permanent. New rules would direct how the state must use the revenue.

A NO vote on this measure means: An existing state tax on health plans would end in 2027, unless the Legislature continues it. The new rules would not become law.

Supporters of Prop 35

California Medical Association
Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California
California Hospital Association
California Dental Association
California Primary Care Association
California Democratic Party
California Republican Party

Opponents of Prop 35

League of Women Voters of California
California Pan-Ethnic Health Network
The Children’s Partnership
California Alliance for Retired Americans
Courage California

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

While Virginia isn’t a core battleground state this year, it does have more than two weeks of mail-in and early in-person voting already in the books, including hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots already cast. We closely monitor early-voting trends to set expectations for election night outcomes, and in Virginia a clear pattern has emerged that could be part of a national trend.

So-called consistent voters — those people who regularly show up to vote in most elections — have already made substantial use of early in-person voting in Virginia, particularly in the areas that tend to support Republican candidates. As several other states start early voting, we will be closely watching to see if similar patterns hold elsewhere, because early voting has important implications for how election results might unfold on election night.

Virginia’s first two weeks of voting by mail and early in-person voting suggest that the gap between the early vote in Republican and Democratic counties might be smaller in 2024 compared to 2020.

The table above shows how many votes and absentee ballots were cast in 2020 based on a jurisdiction’s overall lean toward Democratic or Republican candidates. In 2020, about 2.8 million, or 63%, of the roughly 4.5 million total votes in Virginia were cast before Election Day. However, there were substantial differences in the number of early voters based on a city or county’s partisan lean. In those cities and counties that strongly favor Democratic candidates, 70% of voters cast absentee ballots. In comparison, only about 50% of voters in Republican-leaning counties and cities cast absentee ballots.

The table below compares how many 2024 absentee ballots were recorded as returned by Oct. 11 in these same areas, according to TargetSmart, a voter data vendor. So far in 2024, more absentee voting has occurred in places that tend to support Republicans than places that tend to lean Democratic.

One way to capture this trend is by calculating the percentage of 2020 votes in an area that have already been cast in 2024 via absentee ballots. This ranges from about 12% in the areas that are most supportive of Democrats to almost 22% in those areas that lean toward Republicans. 

TargetSmart also provides information on how frequently these voters participated in the past three statewide general elections (the 2020 presidential election, the 2021 gubernatorial election and the 2022 midterm election).

Voters who have participated in most or all of these elections are almost certain to vote in the upcoming presidential election — which means that observing that these voters are casting their ballots well before Election Day instead of later does not tell us much about what the turnout will look like. However, if early voters are less consistent or new voters, it could signal a shift in electoral trends ahead of  November.

So far, it appears that about 90% of the people who have voted in Virginia are consistent voters who participated in at least two or three of these elections. And there are no meaningful differences in the share of consistent voters based on the partisan lean of the area.

While it might be tempting to interpret these patterns as evidence that consistent Democratic voters are going to cast ballots at lower rates than Republicans in Virginia, we assess that such a conclusion is premature. To see why, the table below uses data from the Virginia Public Access Project to show when voters cast absentee ballots in the state’s 2022 election.

Specifically, the table shows what share of the total absentee ballots cast were recorded 25 days before the election. The data shows that only about 21% of the early in-person ballots and 39% of the mail ballots had been cast at this point in 2022. Notably, a higher percentage of the absentee ballots had been cast in areas more supportive of Republicans than in areas more supportive of Democrats.

Why might voters in more Democratic-leaning areas cast their votes later than in areas more supportive of Republicans? One possible explanation is the availability of  “satellite voting locations” in some Virginia jurisdictions. These are additional locations, beyond the general registrar’s office of a county or city, where voters can cast early in-person ballots starting later in October. These satellite voting locations may make early in-person voting accessible in more populous areas, which tend to be more Democratic-leaning. We will be watching closely to see whether these differences by area even out, or possibly reverse, over the next couple of weeks as satellite voting begins.

If we continue to observe turnout lagging in Democratic areas relative to Republican areas after satellite voting begins, this would lead us to do more investigation about whether consistent Democratic voters appear to be less mobilized than normal this election cycle.

Why these patterns matter for the NBC News Decision Desk

Part of why the NBC News Decision Desk watches absentee voting so closely is because of its implications for the sequencing of how votes get reported on election night. The fact that Democrats were more likely to cast mail and early in-person ballots than Republicans made our work on the Decision Desk more challenging than normal in 2020.

We are accustomed to the fact that counties report election results at different speeds on election night. In some states, smaller, largely rural counties tend to report their votes first, while in others larger, mostly urban counties are the first to report. We have long used models that attempt to account for this unevenness by analyzing whether the counties that have reported more votes tend to lean more Democratic or Republican in past elections compared to counties that have reported fewer votes. These models help us assess what the current reported results suggest about the likely final outcomes.

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Prior to 2020, these models did not adequately account for the fact that counties also do not report different results by vote mode at the same speed. In some states, counties initially report the mail and early in-person votes, and then the Election Day votes. In others, this order is flipped.

As it became clear in 2020 that Democrats were going to disproportionately vote by mail or early in-person and Republicans were going to disproportionately vote on Election Day, we had to quickly improve our models to not only account for differences in the rates of reporting over counties, but also for differences in which vote modes had been counted. And while we are now in a better place to deal with this issue, it will still generally take us longer to project races in states where there are substantial partisan differences in voters’ use of mail and early in-person voting and differences in the speed of reporting by vote mode.

However, seeing these data out of Virginia make us cautiously optimistic that we may observe less partisan differences by vote mode in 2024 than in 2020, at least in states like Virginia that have extensive early in-person voting.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• 100-year-old Jimmy Carter votes by mail for Harris
• Chuck Todd: Will Biden cost Harris the election?
• Trump says Black and Latino Harris supporters need their 'head examined,' echoing frequent barb

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

At 22, she had an abortion at that same clinic and she remembers compassion and respect, the physician holding her hand and a recovery room with a heating pad, snacks and ginger ale.

So when West Virginia legislators passed a near total ban on abortions in 2022, she and the center’s board of directors looked across the border to Maryland and opened a second clinic there in a town called Rawlings. Almost a year to the day that the ban was approved, the new clinic saw its first patients for medication abortions, and since then, for procedural abortions up to 16 weeks. 

“Abortion bans are not about saving babies or protecting pregnant people,” Quinonez-Alonzo said. “They are about power and control.”

Now Maryland is one of 10 states with abortion-related measures on the ballot in November, most of which would protect abortion rights. Nine, including those in Maryland and Florida, where a six-week ban took effect in May, would add reproductive freedom to the state constitutions. Nebraskans, meanwhile, are being asked to choose between two competing citizen-initiated changes: recognize a right to an abortion up to viability or ban abortion in the second and third trimesters. (New York would add anti-discrimination protections for pregnancy to its Equal Rights Amendment with language that backers say would protect abortion rights but opponents argue would expand transgender rights for minors.)

Abortion is already legal in Maryland, without restrictions on how far along a pregnancy is, so why enshrine that right in the state’s constitution? 

“Constitutional protections are just stronger than statutory protections,” said Greer Donley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and an expert on abortion. 

A future legislature intent on restricting abortion rights would have a more difficult time reversing an amendment in a state constitution than overturning a law, much as it is more difficult to amend the U.S. Constitution, Donley said.

"So I think one motivation is certainly to provide extra protections," she said.

Even with its current law in place, the state is vulnerable to attempts to limit abortions, said Adrienne Jones, the speaker of Maryland’s House of Delegates. In 2022, the state’s General Assembly allocated $3.5 million to train medical professionals other than physicians to perform the procedure, but then-governor Larry Hogan withheld the money. Hogan, now a U.S. Senate candidate, said through a spokesman that he did not believe "non-licensed physicians" should perform abortions.

“We can’t uphold the integrity of reproductive freedom in Maryland when access to reproductive services can be limited with the stroke of a pen,” Jones said.

A constitutional amendment would send a message to women across the country that Maryland will protect their right to make decisions about their bodies and for their families, she said. 

“Opening our state to women from West Virginia or Texas who are simply looking for a safe health-care option, represents the respect and freedom all women deserve to make decisions about their own lives,” she said. “I’m looking forward to be able to help them in Maryland.”

Jeffrey Trimbath, the president of the Maryland Family Institute, wants Maryland to be known for its beautiful beaches, not as an abortion destination.

In an open letter to Maryland residents, the institute called the state's abortion laws some of the most extreme in the country and said the amendment demanded "a firm conscientious NO vote." Trimbath knows that most Americans favor abortion rights, but says that groups like his need to do a better job changing minds.

He said the institute believed the amendment to be unnecessary, that it would make what he called common sense restrictions on abortion all but impossible and would undermine parental rights. 

“We’re concerned with the broad language of the amendment,” Trimbath said. “We think it’s rife for legal challenge. We’ll be monitoring that very closely.”

In the two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, legislators in conservative states have raced to pass abortion bans or other restrictions. Twenty states now have full bans in place or limits on abortion earlier than would have been possible under Roe v. Wade. In the rest of the country, abortion remains legal or the protections of abortion rights have increased.

At the ballot box, abortion rights proponents have had the advantage, winning all seven state measures that were voted on in those two years. But that could change this year in Florida in particular.

In 2022, California, Michigan and Vermont enshrined a right to an abortion in their state constitutions, Kansas voted against removing abortion rights protections from the constitution, and Kentucky rejected an amendment specifying that there was no right to an abortion, though a ban remains in place. Montana turned down an initiative that would have required medical interventions to save infants defined by the state as “born alive,” a measure doctors said could result in unnecessary procedures for infants who would not survive.

The following year, Ohio joined the states that had ensured a state constitutional access.

This year, abortion measures will be voted on in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New York, Nevada and South Dakota, in addition to Maryland, Florida and Nebraska. In some states, the initiatives made it to the ballot only after court rulings and other battles with anti-abortion activists.

Florida’s faces the highest hurdle because 60% of the vote is needed for it to pass. It would protect the right to an abortion up until the viability of a fetus and when necessary to safeguard the mother’s health. A University of North Florida poll in July found 69% of likely voters indicating that they would vote yes on the amendment and 23% saying no. But a more recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College, released on Oct. 8, found the measure falling short, with only 46% of likely voters saying they would vote yes. 

Most of the other measures need only greater than 50% of the vote to pass, except Colorado which requires 55%. 

The administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is fighting the amendment, in ways some critics have said is unethical. Detectives have visited the homes of residents who signed petitions to qualify the referendum and the state Agency for Health Care Administration charged that the measure “threatens women’s safety.” It published a webpage last month with a headline reading, “Florida is Protecting Life - Don’t Let the Fearmongers Lie to You” 

DeSantis defended the website at a press conference, saying it was only providing information about Florida's law.

Legal attempts to block ballot initiatives are not limited to abortion measures, argued Peter Northcott, the National Right to Life director of state strategies.

"It makes sense that amending the constitution is not a process that just happens overnight and so there have been legal measures that have been put in place to ensure the integrity of a ballot initiative," he said. "I don’t think that that’s unique to ballot initiatives on this issue."

But Laura Goodhue, the executive director of Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, see the state's efforts as intimidation.

“It’s yet again an example of government interfering in the will of Floridians,” Goodhue said. “We collected 1.4 million petitions. What’s more democratic than citizens petitioning their government?"

Under Florida's new restrictions, Planned Parenthood has seen a decrease in the number of women it has been able to provide abortions for because they are learning that they are pregnant beyond the six-week limit, she said. At the same time it has become more difficult for women to travel to other states for abortions because of the numbers, she said.

It is not a partisan issue, she said. The patients are both Democrats and Republicans.

"It’s been life changing, traumatic, horrific." she said.

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There are exceptions, although whether they are workable depends on whom you ask. The law allows for abortions at up to 15 weeks for pregnancies that are a result of rape, incest or human trafficking, but women must provide documentation such as a police report, which Goodhue said are typically impossible to obtain in a timely way. Abortions also are permitted to save the life of the woman and in the case of fatal fetal abnormalities if before the third trimester.

A 2024 survey on women’s health by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that three in four of women of reproductive age in Florida believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That includes 86% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans.

“Abortion access is something that is overwhelmingly supported by the public,” said Candace Gibson, the director of state policy for the Guttmacher Institute. The ballot measures are one of the few avenues people have to protect that access, she said.

"People have seen the success in the prior ballot measures," she said. "We have a half dozen states where people went out and supported abortion access and so I think for many advocates this is a viable tool to protect the right." 

And discrepancies between a state’s law and a constitutional amendment could later provide an opening for advocates to push to expand rights, Donley said, if for example a law bans abortion after fetal viability but an  amendment does not. 

Across the country, about two-thirds of women or 67% support a nationwide right to abortion, including both Democrats, at 79%, and Republicans, at 49%. More than half of women, 57%, oppose a nationwide ban at 15 weeks and even more, 69% oppose leaving the decision of whether abortion should be legal to states.

As a state bordering ones where the procedure is more restricted, Maryland draws women traveling for abortions. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that of the 39,000 clinician-provided abortions performed in Maryland in 2023, 4,000 were for women who came from other states. Most came from neighboring states, including 990 women from Pennsylvania, 800 from West Virginia and 1,260 from Virginia. 

In Maryland and elsewhere, supporters of abortion rights have been outraising their opponents by significant margins. Only in Nebraska are the totals close.

As of this month, supporters of abortion rights have raised nearly eight times as much as groups that are working against the amendments. The campaign in Florida is costing the most but it remains the most difficult to pass.

"The amount of money that is being spent on these ballot measures is breathtaking and I think is a big factor in what’s driving the results we’ve seen thus far and will certainly be a factor come November," Northcott said.

As of September, the Women's Health Center in Maryland has provided abortion care to 200 patients, with half of them coming from West Virginia. Another 100 or so patients have received sexual and reproductive health care such as annual exams, birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, Pap smears and breast exams as well as gender affirming hormone therapy, Quinonez-Alonzo said.

"I know personally how crucial this health care is and the fact that it is politicized in the manner that it is, it's truly heartbreaking," said Quinonez-Alonzo, who had an earlier abortion at 17.

Her first came when she was in what she described as a controlling, mentally abusive relationship before she had a chance to go to college; the second when she had just graduated and had just started dating her then-boyfriend and now husband. That time she was not treated kindly by the staff, she said.

“It is imperative that states that are leading the way like Maryland enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution,” Quinonez-Alonzo said. “Abortion is a human right. It is an essential part of routine, safe reproductive health.”

Trimbath said his organization knew that Maryland, with its higher support for abortion rights than other more conservative states, could be more resistant to its message.

"Maryland is not like Alabama, it's not like Oklahoma," he said. "We knew that this would pose a challenge for us as pro-life Marylanders."

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Zimmer, 65, of Onalaska, Wisconsin, has been caring for her husband, Chuck Zimmer, since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia in 2018.

“Everything that we worked hard for is going back into his care,” said Sharon — one of the more than 38 million unpaid family caregivers to whom Vice President Kamala Harris appealed last week with a proposal to have Medicare cover the costs of at-home care.

The ranks of U.S. family caregivers have swelled by around 4 million since 2015, according to AARP, causing many to drop out of the workforce. For Sharon, that decision came in 2021, when she gave up most of her part-time retail work after it became too much to juggle with caring for Chuck, now 67. The move slashed their annual household income by nearly $24,000.

The couple now have health insurance through Medicare, but they didn’t qualify for the program when Chuck was first diagnosed, causing a big early hit to their finances. Even now, the Zimmers are still dipping into their retirement funds to subsidize his care. Their out-of-pocket costs are set to exceed $17,000 this year, not including security and transportation.

That is far more than the average $7,200 unpaid caregivers shoulder annually, up from $7,000 in 2016, according to AARP. And while inflation overall slowed to an annual rate of 2.4% in September, the costs of at-home care for ill and elderly people were 8.7% higher than they were the same time last year, federal data show.

Sharon called Harris’ proposal “huge.” While she’d been leaning toward supporting Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, over women’s rights issues, she called the new plan “a deciding factor for us.”

“As of today Harris would have my vote,” said Sharon, who lives in a battleground state — where Harris is set to make her sixth campaign visit Thursday — surrounded by friends who mostly back Republican former President Donald Trump.

Caregiving costs have continued to squeeze millions of households even as price increases for other goods and services cool or outright reverse. Many are long-term, essential expenses that eat away at other financial buffers, said Kelsey Flock, a dementia care specialist at the Aging and Disability Resource Center of La Crosse County, Wisconsin.

“If your loved one is diagnosed younger, they’re losing their retirement, they’re losing their income, maybe losing the primary caregiver’s health insurance,” Flock said, “so you’re coming up with all of those extras.”

Trump has also promised to lower costs for caregivers, though without detailing specific legislation. Any plan to do so by the next administration would most likely require congressional action.

The Harris campaign said in a fact sheet that the at-home care plan would be fully paid for “by expanding Medicare drug price negotiations, increasing the discounts drug manufacturers cover for certain brand-name drugs in Medicare, and addressing Medicare fraud.” The campaign didn’t estimate the cost of the proposal but said similar ones have been ballparked at $40 billion annually.

In response to multiple requests for comment, the Trump campaign twice provided the same statement (as written): “President Trump’s economic agenda will Make America Affordable Again for caregivers and elders by defeating historic inflation, lowering prices, and no taxes on Social Security.”

The economic costs of caregiving aren’t shared equally, with women and people of color taking on disproportionate burdens. The average caregiver spends roughly a quarter of his or her income on out-of-pocket costs, according to AARP data. But those ages 18-34 spend 42% of their income on caregiving. For African Americans, it’s 34%, and Hispanic and Latino caregivers spend 47%.

“My research has shown that Black and Hispanic Medicare beneficiaries are less likely to access higher-quality home health agencies,” said Shekinah Fashaw-Walters, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “This lack of access means that it takes more time, more energy, more knowledge and resources for a caregiver to find the support that they need for their loved one.”

Like the Zimmers, many households find that Medicare and Medicaid don’t cover all the costs associated with elder care, especially for complex conditions among patients whose needs change over time. Medicare covers Chuck’s medication but not nursing home or in-home care. The couple purchased a long-term care policy while they were in their 50s, but they say the out-of-pocket costs for a memory care facility would be prohibitive and they don’t qualify for Medicaid.

Coverage gaps like these are widespread, said David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. “This really highlights just how broken our system is for older adults with dementia and their families,” he said.

While the child care affordability crisis has gained more attention, including in the 2024 campaign, experts say elder care issues have flown comparatively under the radar. “Even though it is hard work, it is also something that is viewed as rewarding,” said Joseph Gaugler, director of the Center for Healthy Aging and Innovation at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. “It’s really an issue of public health import.”

And as Flock sees it, “if we’re looking at child care, we’re being biased if we’re not looking at elder care.”

Bipartisan legislation reintroduced in January would provide a tax credit to caregivers paying out-of-pocket costs of up to $5,000. The bill, which AARP supports, has been introduced in Congress five times since 2016, but it has never seen debate on the floor.

Before the Harris campaign unveiled the new policy idea, Sharon Zimmer had her eye on a proposed $500 caregiver tax credit, also backed by AARP, that state lawmakers have considered in recent years but failed to pass. AARP plans to push for its reintroduction in January.

“Every little bit helps,” she said, “but deep down, $500 doesn’t even pay for a pair of eyewear.”

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In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump signaled that the Burbank congressman was part of the “enemy from within.”

“Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, who is a total sleaze, is going to become a senator,” Trump told Fox News. “And the enemy from within is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

But Schiff waved off the question whether he was concerned that Trump would use every arm of the executive branch to go after him if he gets reelected.

“You have to take any would be despot at their word.  All of his enemies,” Schiff said. “Obama, Joe Biden, Pelosi – any who stand up to him he considers his enemy.”

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As Schiff is set to leave the House of Representatives, he is poised to arrive at a new job in the U.S. Senate – the same chamber where he argued the first impeachment trial of the 45th president.

“You can’t trust this president to do what is right for this country,” Schiff said in January 2020. “This is why if you find him guilty, he should be removed.”

Trump survived the 2020 trial as well as the second impeachment trial.

Fast-forward to 2024, at least a half of the country appears to be ready to return Trump to the White House.

“Twice impeached, multiple felony convictions – he shouldn’t be running for anything,” Schiff said. “It is hard to reconcile – most people get their information now from social media – it allows Donald Trump to be a firehouse of misinformation. Even FEMA workers are worried about their safety because of the nonsense from the former President even after the storms back east.”

While the presidential polls are tight, there is evidence that Trump is gaining support amidst traditional Democratic party constituencies such as Black men and Hispanics.

But Schiff remained confident his fellow Californian, Vice President Kamala Harris, will prevail. 

“I think young people are going to come out in droves who had been apathetic, and they will be the driver of her victory,” Schiff said. 

California voters will decide a statewide proposition this fall that would make it easier for governments to borrow money for affordable housing and local infrastructure projects by changing a voter-approval requirement that dates to the late 1800s.

Under current California law, local governments seeking bonds to pay for projects like parks, police and fire stations, and affordable housing need to ask voters for permission. They also need a supermajority of the vote.

But if voters approve a legislative constitutional amendment on the November ballot, that threshold would decrease from the current two-thirds, a vote requirement that was part of the 1879 California Constitution, to 55 percent.

Here’s what to know about Prop 5.

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What would Prop 5 do?

Prop 5, placed on the ballot by state lawmakers, amends the California constitution by lowering the requirement to approve local government bonds to 55 percent of voters instead of a supermajority — at least two-thirds of voters. That would make it easier for local governments to borrow for affordable housing projects and other local infrastructure, like fire and police stations, road repairs, parks and more.

It would apply to future bonds, including any approved on this year’s November ballot.

Those bonds would then be repaid with higher property taxes.

A Yes vote on Prop 5 means certain local bonds and the property taxes that come with them could be ok’d by 55 percent of the vote of the local electorate instead of the current two-third requirement. The bonds would have to be for affordable housing, supportive housing, or public infrastructure.

A No vote means things stay the same, leaving the supermajority requirement in place.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office notes that a citizens’ oversight committees would be appointed to supervise spending. The nonpartisan agency’s report said certain local bonds are more likely to pass under the amended rules.

“A lower voter approval requirement would make it easier to pass local general obligation bonds for housing assistance and public infrastructure,” the LAO report said. “Recent local election results suggest that an additional 20 percent to 50 percent of local bond measures would have passed under Proposition 5’s lower voter approval requirement. Those measures would have raised a couple billion dollars over many years. A lower voter approval requirement also could mean local governments propose more measures.”

California has been here before. Voters lowered the approval standard for local school bonds from a supermajority two-thirds to 55 percent in 2000.

Who supports Prop 5

Supporters argue the current threshold is undemocratic, allowing one-third of voters to overrule two-third of voters when it comes to important community decisions on housing and public infrastructure. They also claim local governments would be allowed to better pursue their own priorities without as much reliance on state and federal money.

Prop 5 supporters include the following:

• California Democratic Party
• California State Building and Construction Trades Council
• AIDS Healthcare Foundation
• California Housing Partnership
• California YIMBY
• California Labor Federation
• League of Women Voters of California
• United Way Bay Area

Who opposes Prop 5

Opponents argue a broad consensus provided by the supermajority standard is needed for significant projects funded by bonds. In effect, the supermajority requirement acts as a restraint against big spending now that will need to be paid off — with interest — through higher taxes, opponents say. They also claim that financial burden would shift from state to local communities.

Prop 5 opponents include:

• California Chamber Of Commerce
• Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
• National Federation of Independent Businesses
• California Republican Party
• Catalyst For Local Control

But how do you know what happens to your ballot after you submit it?

The state of California is offering Where’s My Ballot? It’s a way for voters to track the status of their vote-by-mail ballot.

Here’s what to know.

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How can I track my ballot?

Voters can track their ballot via the Vote by Mail Status Tool. To track the status of a ballot, voters will need their last name, date of birth, house number or residential zip code. 

According to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, ballots are collected from dropboxes regularly.

• Every 96 hours – excluding Saturdays and Sundays – between the 29th day before the election and the 10th day before the election.
• From staffed drop boxes at least every 72 hours – excluding Saturdays and Sunday –  after the 10th day before the election through the closing of the polls on Election Day.
• From unstaffed drop boxes every 48 hours – excluding Saturdays and Sundays – after the 10th day prior to an election through the closing of the polls on Election Day.

Subscribing to BallotTrax will allow voters to receive notifications on Vote by Mail ballot every step of the way via automatic email, SMS (text), or voice call notifications. Alerts will be sent when the election office mails the ballot, receives the ballot from the voter and counts the ballot. If there is a problem with the ballot an alert will also be sent. 

Voters having difficulties tracking their ballot can call (800) 815-2666 or email votebymail@rrcc.lacounty.gov for help.

All 50 states and the district of Columbia besides Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, and Wyoming offer similar ballot tracking programs.

Where can I place my vote?

The map below shows ballot dropbox locations in Los Angeles County.

Additional ballot dropbox locations for the following counties can be found here:

• Orange County
• Riverside County
• Ventura County
• San Bernardino County

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What does a dropbox look like?

All official dropboxes will have the text “Official Ballot Drop Box” clearly marked on the outside of the box.

Ballot boxes in Los Angeles will typically feature a blue, yellow, and white color scheme, written instructions on side, and seal of Los Angeles county. 

Ballot boxes across counties have different designs. 

Ventura county boxes are typically white with red lettering, Orange county boxes are orange, white, and brown while boxes in Riverside and San Bernardino county feature a red, white, and blue design. 

Boxes are often bolted into cement or chain into place to meet national security standards.  

Ballots are picked up regularly by two county election workers. Problems or issues can be reported here.

Tampering with a drop box is a felony under California elections code.

Ballots can be placed anytime behind now and Nov. 5 at 8 p.m.

One woman tells the NBC4 I-Team it is time to consider the homeless, a group she was once a part of.

The last count found more than 75,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles County and many of them may not realize that they can register to vote, including at county shelters and online.

“The main thing I feel for any homeless person, is you have to learn to become vocal, you know? That’s why we are invisible, because a lot of us tend to be so embarrassed, we don’t want to reach out for help,” Justice Butler said. 

The 65-year-old former radio disc jockey says she found herself homeless at various times in her life, from her hometown of Houston to Los Angeles. She now lives in a studio apartment near McArthur Park.  

One thing that never waned was her desire to be part of the voting process. 

“It means a lot every year, because the first time I’m voting, and I’m teary-eyed because of the people before me, and I’ve really learned to connect to my history,” Butler said. “They died and fought for this right to vote.”

Butler registered to vote while at a Los Angeles city shelter.  

“When I went into the shelter on Skid Row, they gave me all this paperwork to fill out, and one of it was a voter registration card,” she said.  

Her story is not unique.  

California law allows an unhoused or homeless voter to participate in the election, said Dean Logan, who oversees the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

“They can register to vote, they can list the cross street where they spend the most of their time, where they lay their head at night,” Logan said. 

“They can list the shelter where they’re staying for residents’ purposes that ensures they get the most localized ballot that’s effective for them,” he added. 

Logan tells the NBC4 I-Team, currently there are about 800 voters registered with an intersection address and then another approximately 5,500 voters who registered with a shelter, a church or similar place that provides services. 

Still there is the fact that every active registered voter in California receives a vote by mail ballot. 

“So you can list a mailing address. So a lot of those voters may list even a Department of Social Services address where they’re receiving information about their benefits or they can use a shelter address or a PO box to receive the voting materials,” Logan said.   

He says the fail-safe method remains the in-person vote centers, including mobile ones that the county sends to different neighborhoods.  

“We utilize that program to also go to homelessness encampments that are in North County or out in Long Beach or areas like that to ensure that we have access for those voters,” he said.  

The need goes beyond the homeless population.  

“This is a particular issue in this election because we know that there are a group of citizens who through the end of rent control after the pandemic have been displaced from their homes and may not receive their voting materials because they’re dealing with trying to find a new home or a new place to stay,” Logan said.  

Butler says she is battling a debilitating lung disease and is focused on issues that matter to her this election.  

“It’s about somebody having a plan for healthcare,” she said. 

Her message to others, no matter where they live is, is to vote.

“We got to go out to vote,” she said. “This time, we got to go out and vote, y’all, real.”

Vote by mail ballots have been mailed out.  Some of the dozens of in-person vote centers in Los Angeles County will open as soon as 11 days before election day and people can vote at any location, even registering on site. 

Former President Donald Trump proposed a new tax deduction last week for car owners who pay interest on an auto loan, one of many tax breaks he has floated on the presidential campaign trail in recent months.

Trump’s proposed tax break would make interest on car loans fully tax deductible. It’s an idea that he compared to the mortgage interest deduction, which allows some homeowners to reduce their taxable income by writing off a portion of their mortgage interest payments each year.

So, which American households would benefit, and how large would the benefit be?

More than 100 million Americans had auto loans in the second quarter of 2024, worth $1.63 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The average person had a car loan of roughly $24,000 in 2023, according to Experian.

Someone buying a new vehicle this year would pay, on average, about $1,332 a year in interest charges, according to AAA.

While Trump didn’t offer specific details on how the tax break plan would be implemented, some experts say it would likely provide the most benefits to wealthy Americans.

Such a tax break “mostly would benefit wealthier individuals buying more expensive cars as one has to itemize their taxes to get the tax break,” Jaret Seiberg, financial services and housing policy analyst for TD Cowen Washington Research Group, wrote in a note Thursday.

It’d be “unlikely to benefit entry-level” car sales because such buyers generally have “more modest incomes” and claim a standard deduction on their tax returns, Seiberg wrote.

Either way, the proposal is unlikely to have support among many Democrats or Republicans in Congress, which must pass legislation to adopt the measure, Seiberg said.

A Trump campaign spokesperson didn’t return a request from CNBC for comment or additional detail on the proposal.

It would cost about $5 billion a year

During a speech in Detroit on Thursday, Trump compared the policy proposal to an existing federal tax deduction on home mortgage interest.

That tax break lets homeowners deduct annual mortgage interest payments from their taxable income, thereby reducing their tax bill. It’s only available to taxpayers who itemize deductions on their federal tax returns.

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An auto interest deduction would also come at a large cost to the federal government, experts say. To that point, Trump’s proposal on car loan interest would cost about $5 billion a year in income tax reductions, if structured as an itemized deduction, estimates Erica York, senior economist and research director at the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy.

It would cost about $61 billion over 10 years, from 2025 through 2034, York estimates.

Few taxpayers claim itemized tax deductions

To get the deduction, car owners would need to itemize their tax return to include their borrowing costs. 

However, most taxpayers — about 9 in 10 — don’t itemize their deductions, experts said. Instead, they claim a standard deduction.

A taxpayer’s total itemized deductions would generally have to exceed the standard deduction — $14,600 for single filers and $29,200 for married couples filing a joint tax return for 2024 — for them to get a financial benefit.

About 14.8 million federal tax returns, or about 9%, claimed an itemized deduction on their 2021 federal tax returns, according to the most recent IRS data.

A 2017 tax law signed by then-President Trump reduced the number of taxpayers who itemize their deductions.

An itemized tax break on car loan interest “would help only a fraction of taxpayers,” said Leonard Burman, an institute fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

“This percentage might go up a bit if auto loan interest were deductible, but it’d still be true that the vast majority of household would not be able to benefit, and the ones that did would be disproportionately high-income filers,” Burman explained in an email.

About 62% of people who claimed an itemized deduction in 2021 had an adjusted gross income of $100,000 or more, according to IRS data. Such taxpayers claimed about 77% of the total $660 billion of itemized deductions that year, the data shows.

Wealthier individuals generally get more of a financial benefit from tax deductions, York said.

That’s because the value of the deduction depends on a household’s marginal income tax rate, she said.

Here’s a simple example, using AAA’s aforementioned figure of $1,332 in annual interest charges on new cars. A $1,332 tax deduction for someone in the 10% federal tax bracket would be worth about $133, while it’d be worth $493 to someone in the top 37% bracket, according to Burman.

Precedent for an itemized deduction

There’s precedent for treating a tax break on car loan interest as an itemized deduction, said York of the Tax Foundation.

The federal tax code allowed taxpayers to claim a deduction for “personal interest” until the mid-1980s. That deduction was for all types of consumer borrowing, including interest on auto loans and credit cards, York said.

However, Congress got rid of those deductions in 1986.

Today, just a few categories of interest payments are tax deductible, such as interest on home loans, student loans, money borrowed to buy investment property and interest as a business expense, according to TurboTax.

But the powerful board run by five women for each of the five districts across the biggest county in the nation is now split over whether to expand its own agency to have more elected board members. And two opposite sides are actively campaigning for or against Measure G.

What would Measure G do?

If the majority of Los Angeles County voters say “yes” on Measure G, they would allow the county to amend its charter to increase the total number of supervisors to nine, instead of the current five. 

If passed, the county would also create a county executive, who would essentially become “the mayor of the county,” who would be selected by LA County voters.

Measure G also seeks to establish an ethics commission and a legislative analyst, which would review possible policies for the county.

3 vs. 2

While Supervisors Lindsey Horvath, Janice Hahn and Hilda Solis are supporting Measure G, Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Kathryn Barger are against it. 

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Why supporters want Measure G

1. More representation:

• Those who want to expand the Board say Los Angeles County is too massive and diverse to be represented by just five people.
• Supervisors Horvath, who represents the third district, which includes LA’s Westside and the San Fernando Valley, argues county governance reform is long overdue. 
• “The last time the county government changed was back in 1912 when there were more cows than people in this county,” Horvath said. “We need to change our government to make it responsive to 21st century needs.”

2. More diversity:

• Supporters use Supervisor Hilda Solis as an example for why the county board needs to be expanded: While nearly half of LA County’s population is Hispanic, Solis is the lone Latina member of the board.
• By having more seats at the table and more voices to reflect the diverse county, there will be more policies that could serve and represent different areas, according to Horvath and other supporters. 

3. Mayor of Los Angeles County

• In addition to more board members, Measure G seeks to establish a county executive, who would be like a county mayor.
• Instead of the current Los Angeles County CEO who is appointed by the board, Measure G would make that position an elected office, which would force the county’s budget process more transparent, and whoever drafting the budget would be more accountable to the people of LA, supporters argue.

What opponents say about Measure G

1. Giving too much power to one person

• Opponents say if the position of a county executive is created, the person would have no term limits while overseeing the county with the authority to hire and fire county department heads. 
• This mayor of the county would also have full control over the county’s budget with no veto power over the board, according to opponents.
• “It completely alters the balance of power between either five or nine or whatever number of board of supervisors, and this singular person who would be responsible for all 10 million Angelenos,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell during an interview with NBC4’s NewsConference.
• Supervisor Kathryn Barger also called Measure G is a “Trojan horse” to consolidate all decision-making power into one position.

2. Too costly

• While Measure G supporters say that the expansion of the county government would not cost taxpayers, opponents do not buy the argument. 
• Mitchell says all the costs of increasing the number of board districts and creating the county mayor position would come from the existing county budget.
• “I don’t know how you set up this brand-new infrastructure of a county-wide CEO, add four new supervisors, plus their staffs and not think it’s going to cost LA County residents money,” Mitchell said.

3. Stepchildren of LA County

• Opponents argue those who live in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County would become more disenfranchised under Measure G.

• As the pie of the LA County budget and resources are split into more slices – more districts and more decision-makers – the board would be more stifled to provide municipal services in the incorporated neighborhoods, opponents claim.

• “There’s a reason why East LA was fighting for cityhood, and why the San Fernando Valley is frustrated and feels like they’re not heard by the city of LA. This is not going to change that. This is going to make it worse,” Supervisor Barger said.

While Mitchell and Barger oppose Measure G, Mitchell said she supports the idea of increasing the number of board members, and Barger said she supports the notion of creating an ethics commision.

Trump is almost certain to lose California, and that won’t change after his Saturday stop in Coachella, a desert city east of Los Angeles best known for the annual music festival bearing its name. Still, Trump took advantage of his visit to tear into the nation’s most populous state, bringing up its recent struggles with homelessness, water shortages and a lack of affordability. Harris, the Democratic nominee, was previously the state’s junior senator and attorney general.

“We’re not going to let Kamala Harris do to America what she did to California,” Trump said, referring to the state as as “Paradise Lost.”

The former president lost California in a landslide in 2020. He did get 6 million-plus votes, more than any GOP presidential candidate before, and his margins topped 70% in some rural counties that typically favor conservatives on the ballot.

That’s an enormous pool of potential volunteers to work on state races and participate in phone banks into the most contested states. And Trump drew media coverage in the Los Angeles market, the second-largest in the country.

Trump visited Coachella in between stops in Nevada, at a roundtable in Las Vegas for Latinos earlier Saturday — where he praised Hispanics as having “such energy” — and Arizona, for a rally Sunday in Prescott Valley. He narrowly lost those two swing states to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

Attendees who waited in broiling temperatures that approached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) said they didn’t expect Trump to win their state but were thrilled to see him.

“It’s like a convention of like-minded people,” said Tom Gibbons of Palm Desert, who’s backed Trump since 2016 but been unable to see him in person until Saturday, as he waited in line. “Everybody understands the heartbeat of America, the plight of the working man … It’s reassuring.”

Going to California gives Trump the “ability to swoop in and leverage this big population of Trump supporters,” said Tim Lineberger, who was communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan and also worked in the former president’s administration. He’s “coming here and activating that.”

Lineberger recalled Californians making calls to Michigan voters in 2016 on Trump’s behalf and said the campaign’s decision to go into safe, Democratic turf at this point was “an aggressive, offensive play.”

California is also a fountain of campaign cash for both parties, and Trump will be fundraising. Photos with the former president in Coachella were priced at $25,000, which comes with special seating for two. A “VIP Experience” was priced at $5,000.

Speaking for 80 minutes Saturday night, Trump ran through the standard list of Republican complaints about the Democrat-dominated state — its large number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, its homeless population and its thicket of regulations — and waded into a water rights battle over the endangered Delta smelt that has pitted environmentalists against farmers.

The former president was particularly scathing about illegal immigration, warning at one point: “Your children are in danger. You can’t go to school with these people, these people are from a different planet.”

He continued his long-running spat with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom Trump called “New-scum.” Trump again threatened Newsom over the water rights battle, saying that if he didn’t act in favor of farmers, “we’re not giving you any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the forest fires that you have.”

Republicans beforehand listed a number of potential reasons for Trump’s visit.

With congressional races in play that could determine which party controls the House, the Coachella rally “is a get-out-the-vote type of thing that motivates and energizes Republicans in California, when they are not as close to what is going on in the national campaign,” Republican consultant Tim Rosales said.

Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, said he thinks Trump is angling for something that has eluded him in previous campaigns: winning more total votes than his Democratic opponent.

“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he wants to win not only in the Electoral College, but he wants to win the popular vote. There are more registered voters in California than there are residents in 46 of the other 49 states,” Brulte said.

The Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles sits on the Pacific Coast, south of the city. But Trump has long had a conflicted relationship with California, where a Republican has not carried the state since 1988 and Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about 2-to-1.

California was home to the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. As president, he called the homeless crises in Los Angeles and San Francisco disgraceful and threatened to intercede.

Newsom on Wednesday predicted Trump would be denigrating his state at the rally, overlooking its strengths as the world’s fifth-largest economy. The governor said that for the first time in a decade, California has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.

“You know, that’s not what Trump is going to say,” he predicted.

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

The company announced an initiative Tuesday to encourage people who didn’t vote in 2020 to go to the polls this year by handing out up to $100. 

On a website created by the game company, eligible voters are asked to provide their personal information, which is then checked against voter data that the company said it bought from a data broker. “You wouldn’t believe how easy it was for us to get this stuff,” the website said. 

If eligible voters didn’t vote in 2020, Cards Against Humanity offers them a payout, provided they write apologies for not having voted four years ago, create voting plans and publicly post “Donald Trump is a human toilet.” If the voters lean blue and live in swing states, they can earn more money. 

According to the website, over 1,700 eligible voters have already participated. 

Cards Against Humanity is also selling a $7.99 card game expansion pack with cards themed to the election. It said the proceeds from the expansion pack, which go to the company’s super PAC, will contribute to the voter initiative. 

Cards Against Humanity, a popular card game that features offensive and sexually explicit jokes, has increasingly taken a progressive political stance. In 2017 it started launching anti-Trump campaigns to “save America.”

Just days before Cards Against Humanity debuted the new initiative, Musk’s PAC launched its own, offering $47 to people who refer registered swing-state voters to a petition in support of the Constitution’s First and Second amendments. Musk launched a pro-Trump super PAC this year that has so far contributed more than $87 million to Trump’s campaign, according to the nonprofit political finance tracker OpenSecrets. 

UCLA School of Law professor Richard Hasen, an NBC News election law analyst, said he didn’t think Musk’s PAC’s program broke any campaign finance laws, since it doesn’t pay people directly to vote, register to vote, vote in a particular way or not vote. 

The Cards Against Humanity website said it is “exploiting a legal loophole.” It also took aim at Musk directly, writing that registered swing-state voters could participate in his PAC’s program and list Cards Against Humanity as their referrer — compelling Musk’s PAC to send the company money.

“If you’re a registered voter in PA, GA, NV, AZ, NC, WI, or MI, just type your name into this dumb website for his PAC, put ‘MuskIsDumb@cah.lol’ as your referrer, and they’ll be legally obligated to pay us $47,” the Cards Against Humanity website said. “If he doesn’t pay up, we’ll sue him again.”

In September, Cards Against Humanity sued Musk‘s SpaceX for $15 million after, it said, the company trespassed on and damaged its Texas property, which the card game bought in 2017 with fan donations to stop Trump from building a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Voters in Los Angeles County will consider a new sales tax with significant ramifications for resources dedicated to the largest homeless population in California.

If approved, Measure A would provide the county with about $1 billion annually by repealing an existing quarter-cent sales tax and replacing it with a half-cent sales tax. Money raised would go toward combating the homeless crisis by providing shelters, housing and other services.

If it fails, the tax that currently funds many county homeless services would expire in 2027.

Here’s what to know about LA County Measure A.

What to know about LA County Measure A

First, how we got here.

In 2017, Los Angeles County voters passed a quarter-cent sales tax called Measure H with 69 percent of voters supporting the measure. Money from the tax was poured into programs designed to address the regions homeless crisis, such as getting people out of homeless encampments and into shelters. Funds from Measure H have helped move more than 42,000 people in permanent housing and 80,500 into temporary housing, according to the county’s Chief Executive Office.

Measure A would repeal and replace the Measure H-approved tax with a larger one that would be used to fund a wider range of resources, like building new affordable housing.

Supporters say the homeless crisis would get worse if Measure H expires without a replacement. They say that if all Measure H services lost funding, unsheltered homelessness could increase by 28 percent, based on point-in-time 2024 homeless count data provided by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

About one-third of Measure A funds would go to the new Los Angeles County Affordable House Solution Agency for new homes and services to help people avoid eviction and foreclosure. Most of the remaining money would go to homeless services.

Two new oversight bodies would set goals for the programs.

Measure A supporters and opponents

Supporters of the measure include local nonprofits like the Los Angeles-area branches of United Way and Habitat for Humanity, several labor unions, California Community Foundation, Western States Carpenters, Liberty Hill Foundation and other groups.

Critics say money has already been spent on the homeless crisis with few results. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which wrote the official statement in opposition to Measure A, said a tax increase isn’t the best way out of the homeless crisis in Los Angeles County. Opponents argue Los Angeles hasn’t seen enough of a return on the sales tax paid under Measure H after seven years, so why try again with a larger tax?

“Measure A raises the sales tax by more than $1 billion per year, permanently, to pay for the same failed homelessness programs that have wasted over $3 billion since 2017,” the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Associated said in a statement. “Prices are already too high, and so is the sales tax, currently above 10% in many places. Vote No on Measure A.”

Measure A qualified for the ballot by citizen initiative, meaning it is exempt from the two-thirds majority required of government-initiated taxes. A simple majority is required for the measure to pass.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

Decision 2024 10 hours ago

Can you spot the celebrity ‘deepfakes' in a new ad warning against election disinfo?

Decision 2024 Oct 8

Want to follow election results like a pro? Here's what to watch in key states

Decision 2024 Oct 8

What is the Electoral College and how does the US use it to elect presidents?

Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

• Fact check: Harris says law enforcement officers were killed on Jan. 6
• Steve Kornacki: The polls were off in 2020. Will they be again in 2024?
• Inside the New York elections that could decide control of Congress

The Electoral College is the unique American system of electing presidents. It is different from the popular vote, and it has an outsize impact on how candidates run and win campaigns. Republicans Trump and Bush lost the popular vote during their presidential runs but won the Electoral College to claim the nation’s top office.

Some Democrats charge that the system favors Republicans and they would rather the United States elect presidents by a simple majority vote. But the country’s framers set up the system in the Constitution, and it would require a constitutional amendment to change.

A look at the Electoral College and how it works, as Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, compete for the White House on Election Day, Nov. 5:

What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral College is a 538-member body that elects a president. The framers of the Constitution set it up to give more power to the states and as a compromise to avoid having Congress decide the winner.

Each state’s electors vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state. The runner-up gets nothing — except in Nebraska and Maine where elector votes are awarded based on congressional district and statewide results.

To win the presidency, a candidate must secure 270 electoral votes — a majority of the 538 possible votes.

How is it different from the popular vote?

Under the Electoral College system, more weight is given to a single vote in a small state than to the vote of someone in a large state, leading to outcomes at times that have been at odds with the popular vote.

It also affects how candidates campaign. Because the outcome is almost certain in solidly Republican states and solidly Democratic states, candidates tend to focus most of their efforts on a handful of swing states that have split their votes in recent elections.

Who are the electors?

Electors are allocated based on how many representatives a state has in the House of Representatives, plus its two senators. The District of Columbia gets three, despite the fact that the home to Congress has no vote in Congress.

It varies by state, but often the electors are picked by state parties. Members of Congress cannot serve as electors.

How and when are the votes counted?

After state election officials certify their elections, electors meet in their individual states — never as one body — to certify the election. This year, that will happen on Dec. 17.

If the two candidates have a tied number of votes, the election is thrown to the House, where each state's congressional delegation gets one vote. That has happened only twice, in 1801 and 1825.

Once a state’s electors have certified the vote, they send a certificate to Congress. Congress then formally counts and certifies the vote at a special session on Jan. 6. The vice president presides as the envelopes for each state are opened and verified.

Can lawmakers object?

Lawmakers can object to a state's results during the congressional certification, as several Republicans did after the 2020 election. On Jan. 6, 2021, the House and Senate both voted to reject GOP objections to the Arizona and Pennsylvania results.

After Trump tried to overturn his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden and his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Congress updated the 1800s-era Electoral Count Act to make it harder to object and to more clearly lay out the vice president's ceremonial role, among other changes. Trump had pressured Vice President Mike Pence to try and object to the results — something the vice president has no legal standing to do.

Once Congress certifies the vote, the new or returning president will be inaugurated Jan. 20 on the steps of the Capitol.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Here’s everything you need to know before Nov. 5.

When can I vote?

Los Angeles County began sending out vote-by-mail ballots to all registered voters starting last week. Once a ballot is filled, it can be mailed back or dropped off at a ballot box around the city.

Ballots just be dropped in a ballot box by Nov. 5 by 8 p.m.  or mailed prior to Nov. 5. Ballots in the mail can arrive as late as Nov. 12 if postmarked before the deadline. 

Tuesday, Oct. 8 is the first day voters are eligible to deposit their ballot into a ballot box. 

Where are ballot drop boxes located?

Ballot drop boxes in Los Angeles can be found at the following locations:

Additional ballot box locations for the following counties can be found here:

• Orange County
• Riverside County
• Ventura County
• San Bernardino County

What does a ballot box look like?

All official ballot boxes will have the text “Official Ballot Drop Box” clearly marked on the outside of the box.

Ballot boxes in Los Angeles will typically feature a blue, yellow, and white color scheme, written instructions on side, and seal of Los Angeles county. 

Ballot boxes across counties have different designs. 

Ventura county boxes are typically white with red lettering.

Orange county boxes are orange, white and brown while boxes in Riverside and San Bernardino county feature a red, white and blue design. 

Boxes are often bolted into cement or chain into place to meet national security standards.  

Ballots are picked up regularly by two county election workers. Problems or issues can be reported here.

Tampering with a drop box is a felony under California elections code.

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Is my ballot complete?

Before dropping off your ballot, be sure to:

• Place your voted ballot card inside the official return envelope
• Securely seal the envelope
• Sign and date the back of the envelope 

If a vote by mail ballot is returned unsigned a “Unsigned Ballot Statement” will be sent, asking for a signature. A signature is required to verify a voter’s identity and process the ballot.

How soon will my ballot be counted?

According to California Secretary of State Shirley Webers, ballots are collected:

• Every 96 hours – excluding Saturdays and Sundays – between the 29th day before the election and the 10th day before the election.
• From staffed drop boxes at least every 72 hours – excluding Saturdays and Sunday –  after the 10th day before the election through the closing of the polls on Election Day.
• From unstaffed drop boxes every 48 hours – excluding Saturdays and Sundays – after the 10th day prior to an election through the closing of the polls on Election Day.

Voters can track their ballot via the Vote by Mail Status Tool.

What can’t I do near a ballot box?

Within the immediate vicinity of a person voting or within 100 feet of the doorway to a polling location you may not do the following:

• Asking a person to vote for against any candidate or ballot measure
• Displaying a candidates name, face, or logo
• Distributing or wearing merchandise with a candidates name, face, or logo
• Blocking or loitering near the box
• Providing information in favor or opposition to any candidate or ballot measure
• Providing information about a person’s eligibility to vote

 Participating in any of the following actions can result in fines, or even imprisonment. 

Ads on Prop 33 have dominated airwaves and online spaces with both supporters and opponents launching nasty attacks and accusations about each other.

What Prop 33 would do

Prop 33 seeks to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, which currently allows cities and counties to impose rent control only on units built before 1995.

Even for units built before 1995, if a tenant leaves, the landlord can raise the rent to market levels.

Also under current law, local governments cannot limit initial residential rental rates for new tenants or rent increases for existing tenants in certain residential properties. 

If Prop 33 passed, local governments would be allowed to impose rental control on any apartment building regardless of when it was built.

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What supports Prop 33

Supporters of Prop 33, including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Michael Weinstein, say giving local governments options to expand rental control would help stabilize the “skyrocketing” rents across the state, especially in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Proponents also argue Prop 33 would help ease the homelessness crisis by “preserving rent-controlled units” for those in need of housing, such as seniors on a fixed income.

Supporters of Prop 33 also include:

• Los Angeles County
• San Francisco County
• City of Bell Gardens
• City of Santa Monica
• City of West Hollywood
• California Democratic Party
• Los Angeles County Democratic Party
• Marin County Democratic Party
• California Nurses Association
• United Teachers Los Angeles

Who opposes Prop 33

Opponents of Prop 33 point out the proposal would lead to a decline in rental property values across the state, which means property owners will pay less on property taxes, thus leading to the reduction  of property tax revenues for cities, counties, special districts and schools. 

Local government could lose tens of millions of dollars each year from the property taxes, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Critics also say Prop 33 would stop the construction of new housing, including affordable housing. That also means building affordable housing units like ADUs would become harder under Prop 33, according to opponents. 

 Opponents of Prop 33 also include:

• California Apartment Association
• California Association of Realtors
• California Black Chamber of Commerce
• California Building Industry Association
• California Chamber of Commerce
• California Council of Carpenters
• California Council for Affordable Housing
• California Small Business Association
• Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
• Los Angeles County Business Federation

Ugly finger-pointing

The fight over Prop 33 has become even more divisive as the “Yes on 33” campaign began running ads, accusing the backers or the “No” campaign to be tied to the MAGA movement, calling corporate property companies that are part of the California Apartment Association, “greedy.”

Meanwhile the “No on 33” campaign is targeting Michael Weinstein, the polarizing figure and head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, accusing him of accumulating low-income housing properties and being a “slumlord.”

Those against Prop 33 also point out that previous ballot measures that were similar to the proposal had failed to get California voters’ approval, but proponents say now is the time to pass Prop 33 with the housing crisis in the state has reached a fever pitch.

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If approved, voters would allow the state government to borrow billions of dollars for the purpose of improving the infrastructure of public schools and protecting the environment. 

Props 2 and 4 are two of 10 statewide ballot propositions that will be left up to voters in the Nov. 5 election. Here’s what to know about each one:

Here’s what Prop 2 would do if passed:

• Would authorize the state government to borrow $10 billion for repairs, upgrades and new construction of K-12 public schools, community colleges and trade schools
  • $8.5 billion directed towards K-12 schools
  • $1.5 billion directed towards upper education
• Funding would be prioritized for improvements regarding health and safety of students and staff alike, and classroom upgrades.  

Who’s supporting Prop 2?

Supporters say schools across the state are often outdated and in need of basic repairs and upgrades or sometimes just outright unsafe. They also argue it’s one way to retain and attract teachers during a time where school staffing is short nationwide. 

• California Teachers Association 
• California School Nurses Organization
• Community College League of California
• CalChamber
• League of Women’s Voters

Who’s opposing Prop 2?

Those opposing the proposition argue bond obligations will cost the state close to $18 billion with interest, making it uneconomical. 

Passing the proposition would increase state costs by $500 million per year for 35 years, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

• Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
• Reform California
• Press-Telegram

Here’s what Prop 4 would do if passed:

Prop 4 would authorize California to borrow $10 billion in bonds for water conversation and wildfire prevention. Funds could also be used to protect communities and their associated lands.

• $3.8 billion towards drought, flood, and water supply concerns 
• $1.5 billion towards wildfire prevention
• $1.2 billion towards sea-level rise prevention
• $1.2 billion towards land conversation 
• $850 million towards energy infrastructure
• $700 million towards community parks 
• $450 million towards extreme heat resources 
• $300 million to help farmers mitigate climate change  

Who’s supporting Prop 4?

Supporters say the proactive approach to conserve and protect California resources will pay itself back as wildfires, droughts and pollution concerns become increasingly prevalent. 

• Clean Water Action
• CALFIRE Firefighters
• National Wildlife Federation
• The Nature Conservancy 

Who’s opposing Prop 4?

Similar to Prop 2, those opposing the argue bond obligations will cost the state far more than it’s worth and that natural disasters (and their prevention) should be budgeted for, not paid with bonds. Opposing analysts say the bonds will cost taxpayers $2 for every $1 spent.  

Passing the proposition would increase state costs by $400 million per year for 40 years according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts’ Office

• Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association

The once-routine business of running elections in America has become much more fraught with risk in the wake of the 2020 campaign, with poll workers facing harassment, violent threats and chaotic protests. It’s a dynamic that has forced many election officials out of the industry, while those who remain have taken in some cases dramatic steps to protect poll workers and voters ahead of Election Day. Some poll workers are also receiving pay bumps as incentives to stay on through a stressful voting period.

In interviews, county and state election officials shared details of security plans with NBC News.

Maricopa County, Arizona, has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, protests and threats for years, fueled by baseless voter fraud claims from former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The county, the largest in one of the most critical battleground states on the map, will have some of the most intense security in the nation. Its tabulation center will have snipers on the roof, metal detectors and security at every entrance, drones surveilling overhead, and security cameras and floodlights to help law enforcement monitor the area.

There are also two layers of security fencing, and some workers will be bused in from off-site parking to accommodate the newly implemented measures.

“They spared no expense in 2022, they’re all in again this cycle,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said of local law enforcement’s plans.

In Cobb County, Georgia, the sheriff will have officers at every early voting site and patrolling local precincts. The county has set up an emergency operations center at the local 911 call center, where the sheriff’s office, fire department and local utilities will be monitoring CCTVs and social media to keep an eye on everything from traffic and long lines to any potential disturbances at the polls.

“They’re going to pull up the cameras closest to all the 148 polling places to monitor for traffic, accidents, things like that — high volume,” said Tate Fall, the county’s director of elections.

The county allocated money for so-called panic buttons that would allow election workers to quickly contact authorities in emergencies. But officials found implementing the technology difficult since the county doesn’t give poll workers smartphones. They decided to give police radios to election workers instead.

In nearby Gwinnett County, the sheriff will be overseeing security for all its polling sites, even in unincorporated areas typically monitored by local police. The local schools are closed on Election Day, so school police officers will be deployed at polling sites there.

The local election office will have police officers, who been trained specifically on how to best work around an election, monitoring early voting and absentee ballot counting once it begins, said Zach Manifold, the county’s director of elections.

Daniel Baxter, the Detroit election official who oversees absentee counting, said poll worker pay was doubled in 2022 in hopes of easing recruitment and attracting more qualified personnel.

Poll workers this year who agree to work three shifts counting absentee ballots in the convention center, where Republican protesters tried to shut down ballot counting while making baseless allegations of fraud in 2020, will make $2,250.

In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police plan to shut down the street outside the building where the election results are tabulated to control access to the building, said Aaron Dobson, inspector for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office.

In Colorado, where counties are required to undergo an election-related security analysis, the state is making funds available so that officials can make recommended upgrades.

For some county officials, that means upgrading their locks and cameras, while others have installed bulletproof glass and purchased bulletproof vests, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Poll workers who work this election will also make an additional $3 an hour in pay, the same premium rate they made in 2020.

A new state law to fend off insider threats also requires that election equipment be under 24/7 surveillance and protected by keycard access.

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Griswold said officials in the state are preparing for threats they’ve never seen, including those stemming from artificial intelligence.

“We have layers of security — we have military and law enforcement joining our team to protect our cyber support systems,” she said. “People are voting on paper so that, of course, can’t be hacked, but what they’re doing is protecting our support systems.”

She and her staff routinely face threats. One person who made threats against her was arrested while Griswold was in the hospital giving birth.

“We are definitely on top of it, and take all of our security very seriously,” she said. “But the No. 1 thing we do is vote on a piece of paper.”

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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“The Democrats have given us another option. You don’t have to register to vote,” Musk’s mother wrote in the Oct. 5 post. “On Election Day, have 10 fake names, go to 10 polling booths and vote 10 times. That’s 100 votes, and it’s not illegal. Maybe we should work the system too.”

Musk called the post sarcastic in response to criticism and didn’t delete it.

It appeared to echo conspiracy theories about large-scale voter fraud that have been shared by Elon Musk. In reality, investigations have found voter fraud to be rare. Democrats haven’t been found to be orchestrating an operation of the type Maye Musk mentioned.

If voters were to follow her call to “work the system too,” they would most likely be in violation of election law, said Nate Persily, an election expert at Stanford Law School and an NBC News contributor.

Title 52 of the U.S. Code says it is illegal to use false information to register to vote. Violations are punishable by $10,000 fines or up to five years’ imprisonment.

What’s more, a fake name isn’t enough to get you on the voter rolls. Registering to vote requires proof of identity, such as a driver’s license number or the last four digits of your Social Security number. Election officials check that information, and if voters don’t provide it, they will be asked for utility bills or other proof of residency depending on the state.

Musk’s post was flagged with a “Community Note” that pointed out that registering to vote under a false name and casting more than one vote “is, in fact, illegal.” The Federal Election Commission declined to comment on Musk’s post or whether it was investigating it.

The code, however, doesn’t appear to forbid Maye Musk’s statements of encouragement, Persily said. 

“There is a lot of untrue information that circulates on social media with respect to voting,” he said. “The fact that someone makes an exaggerated statement like this does not seem to me like it’s a prosecutable offense.”

Three hours after the original post, Maye Musk made another one telling users to ignore the first one. She also replied in comments to various users concerned about the misinformation in her post, saying they “don’t understand sarcasm” and adding that “this comes from Gavin Newsom,” the California governor, who signed off on Senate Bill 1174, which prevents local governments from imposing voter ID requirements in local elections. 

Elon Musk has similarly condemned the bill in various posts on X, including one in which he wrote that “they just made PREVENTING voter fraud against the law” and compared Newsom, a Democrat, to “The Joker.”

Persily said many states, including New York, Massachusetts and Minnesota, don’t require voters to take identification to the polls and that, even so, there is no evidence that there are different rates of fraud between states that have more lenient voter identification laws and those with stricter ones.

Maye Musk’s post was made the day her son spoke at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania — where Trump was injured in an assassination attempt in July. 

At Saturday’s rally, as he encouraged people in the crowd to vote, Elon Musk said that “if they don’t, this will be the last election.” His mother’s post on X was also a response to one of his posts pushing people to register to vote, reminding them of the deadline to so in Georgia.

In his speech at the rally, Musk reiterated his disapproval for legislation that doesn’t require voter identification.

“You got 14 states now that don’t require voter ID,” Musk said. “California, where I used to live, just passed a law banning voter ID for voting. I still can’t believe that’s real. So, how you supposed to have a good, proper election if there’s no ID? It’s meaningless.”

Critics of laws requiring voter ID say the requirements prevent turnout of eligible voters who may not have government-issued forms of ID like driver’s licenses because of financial or other constraints. Proponents of the laws say they prevent voter fraud, which studies have found to be extremely rare. 

Musk endorsed Trump’s campaign on X after the assassination attempt in July, and he has since joined other tech millionaires in vowing to donate to the pro-Trump super PAC America PAC, which he started.

Musk’s posts on X about the election, many of which have been deemed false or misleading, have generated around 1.2 billion views, according to a report by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. None of the 50 posts from Musk containing misinformation that researchers from the center analyzed this year were flagged with community notes correcting or adding context to his claims.

“It is quite clear that there is a substantial minority of the American population that does not believe the election will be run with integrity or that the results can be trusted,” Persily said. “And it is extremely difficult to counteract those beliefs when people with large megaphones are spreading falsehoods. Ultimately, the real question is whether the people will act on these kinds of posts.”

Elon and Maye Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jane C. Timm contributed.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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Harris told reporters that there’s a lot of “disinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, in particular to the survivors of Helene,” from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It’s extraordinarily irresponsible. It’s about him; it’s not about you,” Harris said. “And the reality is that FEMA has so many resources that are available to folks who desperately need them now and resources that are about helping people get back on their feet and rebuild and have places to go.”

A Trump campaign spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night.

Trump last week amplified a false claim about FEMA’s disaster funds, saying they were being distributed to migrants who entered the U.S. illegally.

“They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” Trump said at a rally in Saginaw, Michigan.

NBC News has reported that Trump and his allies were conflating a more than $20 billion fund exclusively set aside for disaster relief and a separate program established under direction from Congress in 2022 to distribute funds from Customs and Border Protection to help U.S. communities provide services to migrants released by the Department of Homeland Security.

FEMA has also responded, saying its emergency response money “has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.”

Trump spread false claims about the agency at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he said the federal government was providing disaster victims only $750, a claim FEMA has disputed, describing the initial sum as a payment to help cover essentials and emergency supplies while it reviews survivors’ eligibility for more funds.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell referred to Trump’s comments as “just plain false” and “a truly dangerous narrative” in an interview Sunday with ABC News.

“It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do,” Criswell said.

The storm, which made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, became the deadliest on record since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as the death toll rose to 230.

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Springfield, Ohio, has been the target of misinformation about its Haitian immigrant population. Conservative commentators are now falsely claiming the mayor traveled to Haiti and he and other city officials received “kick-backs” for “importing” immigrants to Springfield. The mayor told us he has never been to Haiti nor has he received any “kickbacks.”

Full Story

Former President Donald Trump has spread misinformation about immigrants and asylum seekers crossing the U.S. border over the past several years. During the Sept. 10 presidential debate, as we wrote, Trump made the baseless claim that Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs … They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, also claimed on X that there had been reports of Haitians eating people’s pets in Springfield. In addition, Vance made an unfounded claim that immigrants were responsible for an 81% increase in murders in Springfield, as we’ve written.

Springfield has experienced an influx of immigrants who legally entered the country and moved to the city over the past few years. The city estimates about 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants now live in Ohio’s Clark County, where Springfield is located. Of that group, an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 are Haitian, according to the county’s health commissioner, CNN reported.

But the political discourse has prompted accounts on social media to espouse conspiracies to explain the immigration influx. 

The conservative podcast Chicks on the Right posted a screenshot from a Sept. 12 post on X by former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros. Without providing any evidence, Tantaros claimed, “The Mayor of Springfield, OH has made multiple trips to Haiti. He, and the entire City Council, received financial kick-backs for importing $20,000+ illegal aliens. Its why they ignore the pleas of residents. Nationwide, politicians are profiting from mass illegal migration.”

The Chicks on the Right Instagram post received more than 28,000 likes.

Neither Chicks on the Right nor Andrea Tantaros responded to our requests for information to support their claims.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue told us in an emailed statement: “I have never been to Haiti and I have never received financial ‘kick backs’ or even [been] involved with the transportation of immigrants into our city or even the US.”

Asked in a phone interview if he or the city of Springfield ever received any funding, grants or money related to bringing new Haitian residents to the city, Rue said: “No, absolutely not.”

Rue told us he spoke earlier this year with Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio about the need for federal funding that would allow the city to “reinforce” its infrastructure due to “a rapid increase” of its population. The mayor said the city is seeking additional support for its hospitals, school system, public safety forces, and infrastructure to accommodate the new residents, including additional translation support. 

Rue said the city was not looking for a “bailout” or a per-resident fee when it asked for help. “We just need to be able to communicate with the individuals who are here and for the infrastructure,” he said.

After Springfield was thrust into the national spotlight by Trump and Vance, the city also asked Turner and other federal officials for additional funding to pay for increased security and police overtime to secure its schools, Rue told us. The false claims about the Haitian immigrants sparked a series of bomb threats that led to evacuations and the closing of city schools.

Rue said as a part-time mayor — who earns $14,680 annually — he does not have the ability to influence whether immigrants should move to the city, or even keep track of who’s coming. “No local government has that kind of control. That’s not how it works,” he said. 

On its website, the city says, “No government entity is responsible for the influx of Haitians into Clark County. Once a person with Temporary Protected Status enters the country, they are free to locate wherever they choose.”

Only Congress is authorized to write laws affecting immigration, and the president has broad legal authority to control how immigration laws are enforced. Federal agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of State, and Citizenship and Immigration Services have the authority to enforce immigration laws, or permit immigrants or foreign visitors to live and work in the U.S.

Rue hasn’t received any campaign contributions since 2021, when he ran for reelection to the city commission and received 13 donations, ranging between $50 and $500 each, totaling $2,750, mostly from Springfield residents, according to his campaign filings with the Clark County Board of Elections. 

Rue said as far as he’s aware, no one from the city manager’s office or the city commission – which is similar to a city council — has been to Haiti either.

Bridget Houston, a city commissioner, told us in an emailed statement responding to the social media claims: “Mayor Rue has never been to Haiti. Additionally, none of us ever have, or are currently receiving any financial kickbacks.”

“There has been no ‘importing’ immigrants as well — we are a city and cannot control our physical border and cannot control who lives or visits here. In fact, our Federal allocated dollars have gone down year over year. Most of the Haitians living in Springfield do have Federal documents as well that allow them to be here. Last, I will add that we are also required by the State of Ohio to undergo fraud training every year, and have to disclose all investments to the State of Ohio as well,” Houston said.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

He argues his ideas would improve Americans’ personal financial standing and the overall U.S. economy. A debate about the tax code will be a dominant legislative issue next year given that tax cuts Trump signed in 2017 will be set to expire. If he’s elected again, Trump could push Congress to enact some or all of his proposals, though that might be difficult if Democrats end up in control of either the House or the Senate.

Estimates from outside economic analyses of the costs of the various tax cuts ranged between nearly $6 trillion and $10 trillion over 10 years, depending on which ideas become policy and how they’re implemented.

In a statement, a Trump campaign senior adviser touted the Republican’s plans as the best way to jumpstart the U.S. economy.

“President Trump’s plan will rein in wasteful spending, defeat inflation, reduce the burden of interest costs, and ignite economic growth that fuels federal revenue, so we can make our economy great again,” Brian Hughes said.

A look at Trump’s various tax-related ideas:

‘No tax on tips’

In June, Trump announced his plan to exclude workers’ tips from federal taxes, saying he got the idea from a waitress at his Las Vegas hotel.

“To those hotel workers and people who get tips, you are going to be very happy, because when I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips,” Trump said, adding: “We’re going to do that right away, first thing in office.”

Trump made the announcement in Nevada, a key battleground state with six electoral votes and home to the highest concentration of tipped workers in the country. Nevada has an average of 25.8 waiters and waitresses per 1,000 jobs. President Joe Biden won the state in 2020, but the Trump campaign hopes to put it in play this fall.

Trump has not specified whether he wants to exempt tips from just income taxes or from the payroll tax — which funds Medicare and Social Security — as well.

Vice President Kamala Harris has echoed Trump’s call for no taxes on tips, making a pledge that would apply to hospitality and service industry workers at a Nevada rally of her own two months after her GOP opponent’s announcement.

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Where Trump and Harris stand on immigration and border security

Social Security tax cuts

Trump has also pledged tax cuts for older Americans, posting on Truth Social in July that “SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!”

The challenge is that taxes on Social Security benefits help to pay for the program. The loss of revenue could mean that Social Security would be unable to pay out its full benefits in 2033, two years ahead of the current estimate, according to Brendan Duke of the liberal Center for American Progress.

According to the Social Security Administration, recipients must currently pay federal income taxes if combined income — 50% of the benefit amount plus any other earned income — is higher than $25,000 annually if filing individually, or $32,000 if filing jointly.

While in the Senate, Harris co-sponsored a bill that would have required the wealthy to pay higher Social Security taxes and made benefits more generous for some. The White House has said her views on the program are similar to Biden’s, but Harris hasn’t talked in detail about Social Security during her campaign.

Overtime taxes

Trump has also said he would support legislation to eliminate taxes on overtime pay.

“That gives people more of an incentive to work,” Trump said in September at a campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona. “It gives the companies a lot, it’s a lot easier to get the people.”

Harris has not said if she would also call for cuts to taxes of overtime pay.

Corporate tax rates

Trump’s plans include proposed breaks for businesses, too. He’s called for lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, but only for companies that produce in the U.S.

“We’re putting America first,” Trump said. “This new American industrialism will create millions and millions of jobs.”

As president, Trump signed legislation in 2017 that cut the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%.

Harris has said she believes that big corporations and the ultra-wealthy should pay more in taxes — including a 28% rate for corporations — and wants to use those revenues to help spur the construction of 3 million homes and offer tax breaks for parents.

SALT

Ahead of a September rally on Long Island, Trump pledged that he would “get SALT back,” suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.

The so-called SALT cap has led to bigger tax bills for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.

Some Democrats have pushed to lift the $10,000 cap, a move many Republicans have said they oppose. Some, including Trump’s former GOP primary foe Nikki Haley, have called for making the 2017 tax cuts permanent. Some of that notion is enshrined in Republicans’ 2024 platform, although the permanence provision specifically calls out portions “that doubled the standard deduction, expanded the Child Tax Credit, and spurred Economic Growth for all Americans.”

Harris has not said that she would try to preserve Trump-era tax cuts, which are set to run out at the end of next year. But, like Biden, she has vowed not to raise taxes for Americans who earn less than $400,000 annually.

Tariffs

Angling to bring back more overseas jobs and manufacturing to the U.S., Trump has said repeatedly that he wants higher tariffs on imported goods, and has said the idea wouldn’t increase inflation. He has floated the idea of a universal tariff as high as 20% on all imports and even higher tariffs on Chinese products and on U.S. companies that move factory jobs overseas.

In a recent speech at the Economic Club of New York, Trump suggested that tariffs could be used to solve seemingly unrelated challenges such as the rising cost of child care in the U.S., as part of a broader promise that tariffs can raise trillions of dollars to fund his agenda without those costs being passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices. That’s a view with which many economists disagree since tariffs directly raise the prices of purchasing goods.

Particularly as it relates to the U.S. auto industry, it’s a notion he called for again recently in Savannah, Georgia, where Trump said he’d put a 100% tariff on every car imported from Mexico. Calling for a “new American industrialism,” Trump suggested that the only way to avoid those charges would be for an automaker to build the cars in the U.S.

Harris has described Trump’s ideas for tariffs as a “sales tax” on American households that could cost a typical family roughly $4,000 annually.

Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

Voters are essentially being asked to decide whether it is best to work with the rest of the world or threaten it. Do they favor pursuing worker protections in trade talks, as Tai has done on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration? Or should the United States jack up taxes on almost everything it imports as Donald Trump has pledged to do?

After nearly four years in her job, Tai feels she is making progress on getting the U.S. and its trade partners to focus more on workers’ rights. Decades of trade deals often prioritized keeping costs low by finding cheap labor that could, in some cases, be exploited.

“You can’t do trade policy by yourself,” Tai said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I am confident that the path that we are on is the right path to be on. I think the only question is how much progress we are able to make in these next years.”

It is an approach that has drawn criticism from business leaders, economists and Republicans who say that the U.S. has not made enough progress on new trade partnerships and countering China’s rise.

“There have been no trade deals, no talks to expand free trade agreements,” Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., said in an April congressional hearing with Tai. “Compared to China’s ambitious agenda, the United States is falling behind in every region in the world.”

Trump says that broad tariffs of at least 20% on all imports – and possibly even higher on some products from China and Mexico – would bring back American factory jobs. Most economists say they would hurt economic growth and raise inflation, though the former president has dismissed those concerns.

“If you’re a foreign country and you don’t make your product here, then you will have to pay a tariff, a fairly substantial one, which will go into our treasury, will reduce taxes,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee this year, said at a recent rally in Erie, Pennsylvania.

An Ivy League background and a blue-collar perspective

Tai has degrees from Yale University and Harvard Law School, but strives for a blue-collar perspective on trade. She said that she has injected once-excluded labor union voices into the trade process.

The Biden-Harris administration has not rejected tariffs. It kept the ones on China from Trump’s presidency. It has imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, even though there is not much of a U.S. market for these vehicles that can cost, without tariffs, as little as $12,000. Tai sees that as a way to shield an emerging industry against subsidized and unfair competition.

But the administration also is looking to bolster U.S. workers in the face of competition from China through other industrial policies, such as funding for computer chip factories and tax breaks for technology in renewable energy sources.

The reality, according to some economists, is that domestic factories did not simply lose jobs to China. There were productivity gains that meant some manufacturers needed fewer employers and there was a broader shift as more workers moved away from manufacturing and into the services sector. Those factors often get less emphasis from Tai, said Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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“It seems to me that she’s focusing on the easy one — the one where you can blame the ’bad guy,’ China,” Lovely said.

There is unfinished work.

The trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework spearheaded by Tai remains incomplete. That effort by Washington and its allies in Asia is meant to counterbalance China’s ascendance without needing a trade deal, but it puts more of a focus on workers’ rights and environmental protections than past proposals.

“What I have discovered is that we actually all want the same thing,” Tai said. “Fundamentally, what we’re doing is innovating the way you do trade policy, innovating the way globalization is going to play out into the future.”

Tai said she is trying to foster a trade policy with other countries that “allows for us to build our middle class together and to stop pitting them against each other, because that’s been the model we’ve been pursuing for the last several decades.”

William Reinsch at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said it is not surprising that Asian countries involved in the initiative would say they support their middle-class workers. But he saidt Democrats have not provided the access to U.S. markets that trade partners want in return for the focus on workers.

“The consistent message we have gotten from the Asian partners is that they are looking for tangible benefits, and the U.S. is not providing any,” he said. “Trying to rearrange the traditional social order, however meritorious that would be, can be an uphill battle.”

The revised North American trade agreement is a model

Tai sees herself as having a proof of concept that her approach to trade can thrive. It just happens to come from the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the revised North American trade deal signed during the Trump administration and cited by Trump as evidence that he knows how to negotiate with the rest of the world.

In her interview, Tai said the agreement includes a “rapid response mechanism” that enables the government to penalize factories that violate workers’ rights. Tai said that as of late September, the U.S. government has invoked the mechanism 28 times and concluded 25 of those efforts.

Tai said that has directly benefited 30,000 Mexican workers who could elect their own union representation, allowing them to receive higher wages, back pay and other benefits.

“We are empowering workers through trade,” she said. “And by empowering Mexico’s workers, we are ensuring that America’s workers do not have to compete with workers in our neighboring country who are being exploited and who are being deprived of rights.”

Praise for the agreement appears to be a rare point of convergence on trade between Trump and the Biden-Harris administration. But their perspectives are different. Trump tells voters that his threats of massive tariffs can cause foreign governments to accept America’s terms on trade and immigration.

“I ended NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever made and replaced it with the USMCA, the best trade deal ever made,” he said Monday, referring to the North America Free Trade Agreement signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Tai, barred by the federal Hatch Act from weighing in on the presidential campaign from her office, is cautious in her remarks. But she disputes Trump’s claim.

She notes that there were actually two negotiations on trade with Canada and Mexico. The first negotiation was among the Trump administration and the other two nations. But the second was between Trump’s team and congressional Democrats who needed to ratify the deal and that led to worker protections, a component Tai worked on when she was a congressional staffer.

But then, she added, just getting a written deal on trade protections and rights is never enough. The text needs to be backed up by action.

“They’re just words on the page unless it’s implemented,” she said.

The analysis released Monday by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget suggests a Harris presidency could increase the national debt over 10 years by $3.5 trillion. That’s even though the vice president’s campaign insists her proposed investments in the middle class and housing would be fully offset by higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Her campaign policy guide states that Harris is “committed to fiscal responsibility — making investments that will support our economy, while paying for them and reducing the deficit at the same time.”

The same analysis says former President Trump’s ideas could heap another $7.5 trillion onto the debt and possibly as much as $15.2 trillion. That’s even though he suggests growth would be so strong under his watch that no one would need to worry about deficits.

The 34-page report released by the fiscal watchdog group puts a spotlight on the issue of government borrowing that will confront the winner of November’s election. Total federal debt held by the public now tops $28 trillion and is expected to keep climbing as revenues can’t keep up with the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The analysis noted that the expense of servicing that debt in dollar terms has “eclipsed the cost of defending our nation or providing health care to elderly Americans.”

Drawing on the candidates’ speeches, campaign documents and social media posts, the analysis warns bluntly: “Debt would continue to grow faster than the economy under either candidates’ plans and in most scenarios would grow faster and higher than under current law.”

Neither candidate has meaningfully stressed budget deficit reduction in their pitch to voters. But multiple analyses show a clear difference of Harris being much more fiscally responsible than Trump.

Harvard University professor Jason Furman, who was the top economist in the Obama White House, estimated in an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal that Harris’ plans could cut deficits by $1.5 trillion or raise them by $1.5 trillion. Meanwhile, his estimates show that Trump’s plans would increase deficits by $5 trillion, though that figure does not include his plans to charge no taxes on overtime pay and scrap the limit on deductions of state and local taxes.

There are other estimates by The Budget Lab at Yale and the Penn Wharton Budget Model that also show Harris would be better at keeping the deficit in check.

The Harris campaign said it sharply disagreed with the analysis of Harris’ policies by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, saying she would reduce the deficit if she became president.

The Trump campaign also criticized the analysis, with Brian Hughes, a senior adviser, saying, “Trump’s plan will rein in wasteful spending, defeat inflation, reduce the burden of interest costs, and ignite economic growth that fuels federal revenue, so we can make our economy great again.”

The committee analysis estimates that Harris’ policy ideas could add $3.5 trillion to the national debt through 2035. That conclusion depends on its treatment of how much various programs could cost.

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It forecasts that Harris would implement $4.6 trillion in tax reductions, including extensions of some of the expiring 2017 tax cuts that Trump signed into law and tax breaks for parents and no taxes on tipped income for hospitality workers. Roughly $4 trillion in higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy would be insufficient to cover the total cost of her agenda and the additional interest on the debt that it could generate.

Still, the analysis notes that its numbers depend on various interpretations of what Harris has said. It’s possible that Harris’ agenda would add nothing to baseline deficits, but the report also said it might plausibly add as much as $8.1 trillion in debt in what appears to be a worse-case scenario.

By contrast, Trump’s ideas would likely add another $7.5 trillion to the debt. His $2.7 trillion in tariff revenues would be unable to cover $9.2 trillion in tax cuts and additional expenditures such as $350 billion to secure the border and deport unauthorized immigrants.

But the analysis includes other possibilities that show far higher deficits under Trump. If his tariffs raised less money and there were higher costs for his mass deportations and tax breaks, the national debt could jump by $15.2 trillion.

On the other hand, if the tariffs raised $4.3 trillion and there were no costs tied to deportations, Trump’s plans could only increase the debt by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.