Early voting kicks off in key battleground states with high turnout

The election race in the USA has begun. Residents of three states—Minnesota, Virginia, and South Dakota—can already vote in the presidential election. Americans have several options for casting their votes.

On Friday, Virginia residents were the first to vote in this year's presidential election. Already then, long lines of voters formed around offices in the counties of Stafford, Prince William, and Fairfax, located in the suburbs of Washington. This state was once a Republican stronghold; now, Democrats hold the advantage.

However, this is not the only way to cast a vote. State residents can send their votes by mail, deliver mail-in votes to local offices, or place them in specially designated boxes. Voting in this manner will end three days before Election Day—November 2.

Elections for the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will occur alongside the presidential election. In many states, residents will also elect governors and local legislatures.

On Friday, voting began under similar rules in "Republican" South Dakota and Minnesota, whose governor is Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz.

Residents of North Carolina and Pennsylvania will receive their ballots this week. In these states, the process was delayed due to legal complaints from independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy endorsed Trump in the election and demanded his name be removed from the ballots.

Residents of Alabama have already received their mail-in ballots, but in-person early voting is not allowed. Early voting in Illinois and Mississippi will begin next week.

Early voting and mail-in voting, though long-standing elements of the electoral process in the USA, were associated in 2020 with significant controversies due to Donald Trump's allegations. The Republican candidate falsely suggested that they were mechanisms for electoral fraud.

Democratic Senator and former vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine, when asked if he fears a repeat of this scenario, stated that while such trouble is not expected in Virginia, similar issues could arise in other states where a fierce battle is ongoing, including Georgia.

In Manassas, Kaine and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Mark Warner encouraged voters to participate in early voting. They pointed to the enthusiasm visible among the party's electorate and noted that the electoral race would be very tight. However, they warned of election interference from Russia and Iran.

The senator, who is also fighting for re-election, admitted that he is concerned about America's enemies trying to influence the electoral process. “We've got all of these new artificial intelligence tools, deepfakes being one example, but a whole host that allows you to spread disinformation, misinformation at speed and scale that's unprecedented. So I said [we’re less prepared for election interference in 2024 than 2020], I put those words out, and I think we got people's attention. We just won't know though how successful we are probably until late in the election because generally speaking, foreign entities will launch their efforts quite close to the actual voting date,” he said.

Kaine believes that although Harris is leading significantly in Virginia, narrow margins of votes in the seven most contested states will determine the victory.