Good afternoon and welcome back to another day on the presidential campaign trail.
This is our daily wrap, making sure you’re caught up on the latest election developments.
In Thursday’s wrap, we take a look at the fresh surge in conspiracy theories and the complaint by Donald Trump against the UK Labour Party.
Let’s get into it.
Election officials ‘playing whack-a-mole’ against conspiracy theories
Voting machines reversing votes, more registered voters than people, and large numbers of non-citizens voting.
These are the conspiracy theories US officials are fighting less than two weeks out from election day.
Quote of the Day
“I don’t want to just win, I want to win by such a big margin that we’re going to bed early on Tuesday night.”
— JD Vance, during a Las Vegas campaign rally.
State and local election officials say they’re being forced to spend their time debunking rumours and explaining how elections are run, while also trying to oversee early voting and prepare for November 5, local time.
Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Deirdre Henderson said it was like “playing whack-a-mole with truth”.
“Truth is boring, facts are boring, and outrage is really interesting,” she said.
In Shelby County, Tennessee, county election officials said human error was to blame for reports of votes being changed.
Voters had been using their fingers instead of a stylus to mark their selections on voting machines, officials said.
Trump campaign accuses UK Labour of election interference
The Trump campaign has filed a complaint against the UK’s Labour Party, telling the US election watchdog they “attempted to influence” the election.
The six-page complaint cited news reports detailing close ties between the UK’s ruling party and Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign.
It also references a now-deleted LinkedIn post made by Labour’s head of operations which said there were “nearly 100 Labour Party staff” ready to campaign for Ms Harris in swing states.
“This week marked the 243 anniversary of the surrender of British forces at the Battle of Yorktown,” the complaint reads.
“[It was] a military victory that ensured that the United States would be politically independent of Great Britain. It appears that the Labour Party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters Labour volunteers had “gone over pretty much every election”.
Other UK officials echoed his comment, noting the party’s volunteers and staffers were allowed to “do what they want to do in their own time” at their own expense.
A Missouri journalist, Ryan Gamboa, was injured when a rifle fired by a Democrat candidate caused a metal fragment to hit him in the arm.
Lucas Kunce, a Marine, is trying to unseat Republican senator Josh Hawley.
Mr Kunce was firing AR-14-style rifle at targets at a Kansas City home, in what appears to be an a attempt to appeal to moderate and Republican voters.
His opponent, Mr Hawley, responded to the incident jokingly on social media: “I condemn all acts of violence against reporters and call on Kunce never to shoot another one.”
Majority of Americans ‘extremely’ concerned about AI during election campaign
More than a third of US adults believe artificial intelligence will be used “mostly for bad” during the presidential campaign, according to a Pew Research Centre study.
The research organisation surveyed almost 10,000 adults for the report.
A majority of US adults, it found, were also “extremely or very concerned” about people using AI to “create and distribute fake or misleading information” about candidates and campaigns.