The voting window for the Nov. 5 presidential election is now open. Early in-person voting started Friday in three states, after absentee ballots began going to voters last week.
Here is a look at some key developments in the roughly six weeks remaining until Election Day.
Who’s ready to vote?
The first batch of ballots typically sent out are ones to military and overseas voters. Under federal law, that must happen at least 45 days before an election — which this year is Saturday, Sept. 21.
Some states start earlier.
Election offices in North Carolina had been scheduled to begin sending mail ballots to all voters who requested them on Sept. 6, which would have made it the first state to begin distributing ballots. But that was delayed because presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. successfully sued to have his name removed from the state’s ballot after he suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. That allowed Alabama to become the first state to send out absentee ballots for the presidential election cycle.
North Carolina’s 100 counties were finally able to send absentee ballots to military and overseas voters on Friday, Sept. 20.
Voter registration deadlines vary by state, with most falling between eight and 30 days before the election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The deadline is Oct. 7 in Georgia, one of this year’s most prominent presidential battlegrounds.
Nearly all states offer some version of in-person voting, though the rules and dates vary considerably. Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia kicked off early in-person voting on Friday.
The gloves come off
The first presidential debate between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump is over, and a second debate appears doubtful after Trump ruled out the possibility.
Harris’ pick for vice president, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Trump’s, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have agreed to an Oct. 1 debate hosted by CBS News in New York City.
A possible criminal sentence for Trump
Trump had been scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 18 in his hush money criminal case, but that has now been delayed until after the election.
Trump’s lawyers had argued that holding the sentencing as originally scheduled, about seven weeks before Election Day, would amount to election interference.
Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years in prison. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge that would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment.
Next steps in Trump’s other New York cases
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Sept. 6 in Trump’s appeal of a jury’s verdict last year ordering him to pay $5 million to writer E. Jean Carroll after it found him liable for sexually assaulting and defaming her. Trump also is appealing a verdict in a second trial in January in which a jury found him liable on additional defamation claims and ordered him to pay Carroll $83.3 million.
On Sept. 26, a New York appeals court will hear oral arguments in Trump’s challenge of a nearly $500 million civil fraud judgment in state Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against him. The court typically rules about a month after arguments, meaning a decision could come before the November election.
Trump’s lawyers argue that a judge’s Feb. 16 finding that the former president lied for years about his wealth as he built his real estate empire was “erroneous” and “egregious.” State lawyers responded in court papers that there’s “overwhelming evidence” to support the verdict.
What about Trump’s election and document cases?
A state case in Georgia that charged Trump and 18 others in a wide-ranging scheme to overturn his 2020 loss in the state is stalled with no chance of going to trial before the election.
Federal prosecutors have brought two criminal cases against Trump, but one was dismissed by a judge last month and the other is likely to be reshaped by the recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office.
Special counsel Jack Smith has appealed the dismissal by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon of an indictment charging Trump with hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and obstructing the FBI’s efforts to get them back. But even if a federal appeals court reinstates the case and reverses the judge’s ruling that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional, there’s no chance of a trial taking place this year.
In light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, a federal judge in Washington is now tasked with deciding which allegations in a separate case charging Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 election can remain part of the prosecution and which ones must be discarded. Deciding which acts are official and which are not is likely to be an arduous process.
Fights over voting and the election
Before the first ballots were even cast, both camps had been gearing up to fight over voting.
Battles over election rules have become a staple of American democracy, but they’re expected to reach new heights this year.
Georgia, a state Trump narrowly lost in 2020, has become a particular concern for Democrats. A new majority aligned with Trump on the Georgia State Election Board has been making significant changes to the state’s election rules that could affect certification and lead to chaos within election offices that might delay final results.
Trump installed his own leadership team at the Republican National Committee, including a director of election integrity who helped him try to overturn Biden’s win in 2020. The RNC has filed a blizzard of lawsuits challenging voting rules and promises that more are on the way
Democrats also are mobilizing and assembling a robust legal team. Among other things, they are objecting to GOP efforts to remove some inactive voters or noncitizens from voter rolls, arguing that legal voters will get swept up in the purges.
Republicans have particularly escalated their rhetoric over the specter of noncitizens voting, even though repeated investigations have shown it almost never happens. Some also are pushing to give local election boards the ability to refuse to certify election results.
All indications are these efforts are laying the groundwork for Trump to again claim the election was stolen from him if he loses and to try to overturn the will of the voters. But there’s no way to know if that will happen until the ballots are cast.
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Associated Press writers Kate Brumback and Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, Meg Kinnard in Chicago, Nicholas Riccardi in Denver, Michael R. Sisak in New York and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report, as did AP election researcher Ryan Dubicki in New York.
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