By Meg Wagner, Melissa Macaya, Veronica Rocha, Melissa Mahtani and Amanda Wills, CNN
From CNN's Kelly Mena and Sara Murray
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar announced on Tuesday that more than 2.5 million mail-in and absentee votes have been returned.
The ballots returned represent more than 81% of the more than 3 million ballots sent out, according to Boockvar.
From CNN's Holmes Lybrand
Spalding County, Georgia, south of Atlanta, has resolved issues with their polling machines.
Earlier, the county reported a system-wide issue with polling machines and posted this message on Facebook:
“We are aware of a county wide technical issue with all polls. Provisional ballots are being delivered to every location. Expect to wait in longer lines until the issue is fixed."
The issues have now been resolved.
The county updated their Facebook post to say:
“All polling stations in each precinct are now up and running as they should be.”
Trump won Spalding County with 15,636 votes in 2016, compared to 9,347 votes for Hillary Clinton.
UPDATE: This post has been updated to reflect that the polling machines are back up
From CNN's Adrienne Vogt
Enthusiasm is high at a Houston polling station as voters line up to cast their ballots, CNN’s Brian Todd reports.
“I think it's going to change the direction of our country one way or the other. I've never seen emotion like this before, in all the years I've lived here,” said a voter who has been casting her ballot in Harris County for 50 years.
She also discussed how the demographics of the Houston area have changed drastically in the last 50 years.
“When I was growing up here, it was like an overgrown cow town. And now it's a thriving metropolis, so international, so many different views and ideas,” she told Todd.
Todd reported that there are supporters of President Trump near the voting location chanting with signs and bullhorns. But voter intimidation from anyone “has not been a factor,” he said.
Watch:
From CNN's Bob Ortega
As Election Day voting got underway in Arizona, long lines formed quickly at many polling places in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and its suburbs.
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m., and by 7:30 there were wait times as long as 45 minutes for voting sites in GOP strongholds such as Glendale, Chandler, Gilbert and Surprise, according to estimates posted on the Maricopa County Recorder’s election site.
Late Monday, Cochise County Recorder Lisa Marra tweeted that her office had received dozens of calls from people demanding to know when their ballots had been counted. Cochise County, stretching from east of Tucson down to the US-Mexico border, also voted for Trump in 2016.
“They know the date we received it,” she wrote. “Wanted to know date and time counted. Because the President said if they didn’t get that info to go vote again tomorrow. Horrible advice for voters. STOP.”
Nearly 2.7 million Arizonans have voted early by mail or in person, representing 62.4% of active registered voters in the state, according to data provided by the Arizona Secretary of State’s office.
From CNN's Sarah Jorgensen
As of today, a total of 235,834 absentee ballots have been returned to town clerks, according to the latest data from the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office.
This means that 54,257 ballots have been returned in the past week.
The total absentee ballot count is nearly one third of the total 2016 voter turnout of 755,850 and is more than three times the amount of absentee ballots returned in that election, 75,305.
There are still 13,824 outstanding absentee ballots that have been requested but not returned, according to the data. Absentee ballots in New Hampshire must be received by 5 p.m. local time today, and they can be returned in person.
From CNN's Annie Grayer
Voting in Michigan today is going “smoothly” so far, Communications and External Affairs Director for the Michigan Secretary of State Jake Rollow told reporters this morning.
Rollow shared that “about a dozen” of the state’s 2,000 reserve poll workers had to be deployed this morning to help staff polling locations in Pontiac and Grand Rapids. Rollow did not specify whether this was because of the pandemic. These workers are meant to be deployed if a poll worker scheduled to work today didn’t show up.
With 3.1 of the 3.5 million absentee ballots requested already returned, Rollow said the state has an 89% return rate, which he said is lower than 2016. In 2016, Rollow reports the state had a 96% return rate as of Election Day.
Rollow said “that’s to be expected” given the fact that there are roughly three times as many absentee ballots this election than in 2016, and the mail has been slow.
From CNN's Katie Lobosco
So far, 510,076 Nebraska absentee ballots have been returned, the Nebraska Secretary of State’s office said Tuesday morning. That’s a 91% return rate.
There are currently 48,382 absentee ballots outstanding. More than 27,000 were received yesterday.
Absentee ballots must be returned via mail or a drop box before polls close today at 8 p.m. local time (that's 9 p.m. ET) in order to be counted.
Absentee ballots are counted first and the results are expected to be posted shortly after the polls close.
From CNN's Kelly Mena
Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, had delayed openings in three election districts, according to a county official.
Amie Downs, communications director for the county said Tuesday morning that the three polling sites that were down earlier today “are all open and operating now.”
Earlier this morning, in an emailed statement, Downs addressed the unopened sites:
“At this time, there are three election districts which have not opened. Elections has staff at each site and is creating a new suitcase with materials so that they can open," she said.
Downs explained to CNN that the “suitcase” has the voting materials. Those materials didn’t make it to these locations, but they are working to fix it. She noted that there are sites in Monroeville, McKeesport and Pittsburgh that remain unopened.
Earlier this morning, Downs also gave an update on the processing of mail-in and absentee ballots saying about 25% of the over 334,000 ballots are “at some stage of processing.”
Some of the ballots are further along in the process.
“Over 13,500 have gone through the declaration review and have had the declaration envelope opened and the secrecy envelopes extracted,” she added.
UPDATE: This post has been updated to reflect that the polling sites are now open.
From CNN's Kelly Mena
Allegheny county in Pennsylvania, which includes Pittsburgh, will scan its first few thousand mail-in and absentee ballots shortly, according to a county official.
“Approximately 80% ballots at the warehouse are at some stage of the pre-canvassing process. Over 105,000 have had the declaration review and had that first envelope opened, and another 10,000 have now had the secrecy envelope opened and are extracting and flattening the ballots for scanning,” said Amie Downs, Communications Director for Allegheny County, in an email on Tuesday morning.
Downs also noted that the three polling sites that were down earlier in the morning “are all open and operating now.”
She also noted that reports of machines not working correctly have all been addressed, with most of them being due to an operator error.
“Additional reports of needs for additional supplies or items for polling places have been addressed or were provided but poll workers were not aware they already had them,” she added.