During the 2016 presidential election, Dennis Whitlow Jr. was heartbroken when his son asked him a question about Donald Trump.
“How can America elect somebody that makes fun of disabled people?” his son, Dennis III, asked him at the time, Whitlow recalled.
The insult had felt personal, he said, because his son is autistic.
Most Florida felons who have finished their sentences will be able to vote again in future elections.
Voters on Tuesday approved Amendment 4, which says that most felons will automatically have their voting rights restored when they complete their sentences or go on probation. The amendment exempts those convicted of sex offenses and murder.
Supporters said the state's current system was too onerous. It required felons to wait at least five years after completing their sentence before they could file a request with the governor and Cabinet. About 1.5 million people are affected. Nearly all states allow felons to vote after completing their sentences.
After a year in Japan, Mackenzie Malerstein was excited to have returned to California in time to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s election.
The nation may be focused on the congressional races in Orange County that could determine which party controls the House, but Malerstein said it was some of the state propositions that were more dear to her heart.
Especially Proposition 12, about the treatment of chickens.
Massachusetts elected its first black woman representative to the U.S. House.
Democratic candidate Ayanna Pressley, the first black woman elected to the Boston City Council, ousted veteran Democratic Rep. Michael E. Capuano in the primary. Pressley candidate ran unopposed.
Lacey Kraft has been registered to vote for 16 years, but today was the first time she cast a ballot.
She knew voting was important, but politics had always intimidated her.
“It’s so important it scared me almost, if I chose the wrong ones. It still does,” she said, standing next to her 5-year-old daughter, Lexie. When Kraft’s father found out recently that she’d never voted, he gave her a stern talking-to.
The Kentucky clerk who went to jail in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples has lost her bid for a second term.
Republican incumbent Kim Davis was defeated by Democrat Elwood Caudill Jr. in Tuesday’s election for clerk of Rowan County in northeastern Kentucky.
Caudill is well known in the county, having worked for the county Property Valuation Administrator’s Office for 21 years. He lost to Davis by just 23 votes in the 2014 Democratic primary. Davis later switched to the GOP.
The deluge of voters at the Simi Valley Masonic Lodge, where half a dozen voters had queued up at 6:30 in the morning, had slowed to a trickle by the time T.J. Tolliver came to cast his ballot early Tuesday afternoon.
“I think that every citizen should vote, so I voted for what I thought would improve our life,” said Tolliver, adding that he was concerned most with increasing access to housing, education and healthcare.
Trump wasn’t a big factor in his vote, the 26-year-old substitute teacher and caterer said, pointing instead to the state ballot measures that dealt with issues he cared about.
Voters showed up by the dozens to put their "I Voted" stickers on the headstone of Susan B. Anthony, an election day ritual that pays homage to the women’s voting rights pioneer.
Deborah L. Hughes, president and chief executive of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House, said there were already a few dozen stickers decorating the gravesite by the time she arrived about 10 a.m. Images of the headstone covered in voting stickers quickly became widely shared on social media.
Jessica Crane drove 40 minutes to add her sticker to celebrate "everything we have accomplished and have yet to accomplish."
Early returns from around the country indicate unusually high turnout for a midterm election in several key states.
One in six voters were casting ballots for the first time in a midterm, according to an exit poll conducted for several of the major television networks
Both the network exit poll and a separate survey of 113,677 voters nationwide conducted for the Associated Press showed widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the nation.
Grammy-nominated musician Moby broke out the acoustic guitar at a rally for Democrat Katie Porter in Tustin on Tuesday. Porter is running against Rep. Mimi Walters of Laguna Beach in California’s 45th Congressional District.
Singers Mindy Jones, middle, and Julie Mintz joined Moby onstage.