MADISON, Wis. — Early voting kicked off in this battleground state this week with computer delays and long lines.

Voters waited as long as three hours Tuesday to cast ballots in West Bend, a city of about 32,000, city clerk Jilline Dobratz said. State computer issues reared up again Wednesday, and by midafternoon, voters had to wait about 90 minutes to vote in the community 40 miles northwest of Milwaukee, she said. Residents were not used to anything like it.

A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post.

Sister Stephanie Schmidt had a hunch about what her fellow nuns would discuss over dinner at their Erie, Pennsylvania, monastery on Wednesday night.

The day before, a Republican operative in the battleground state falsely suggested to his nearly 58,000 followers on X that no one lived at the monastery and that mail ballots cast from there would be “illegal votes.” Cliff Maloney, who hired 120 people to go door-to-door across Pennsylvania urging Republican voters to return their mail ballots, wrote on X that one of those workers had “discovered” an Erie address where 53 people were registered to vote but “NO ONE lives there.”

DULUTH, Ga. — Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson warmed up the crowd at Donald Trump’s rally here Wednesday night with a dark metaphor, bashing Vice President Kamala Harris and declaring that “dad” was coming home to mete out discipline.

“He’s pissed!” Carlson said to extended cheers. “Dad is pissed. … And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.’”

Both of the major-party presidential candidates describe the election two weeks from now as determinative for the future of the nation. Many or most of their supporters, it seems safe to say, concur with those assessments: that America is at a fork in the road, and voters will determine which route the nation takes.

Before former president Donald Trump addressed the audience at a meeting of religious activists in North Carolina on Monday, his son offered some thoughts.

After suggesting that his father survived the attempt on his life earlier this year thanks to divine intervention, Eric Trump told the audience that “we need God in our life. We need God in society. We need children to respect God. We need God in our schools. And if [Vice President] Kamala Harris won’t say it, I will: We love God, and we will always be a nation of faith.”

A federal judge has ordered Rudy Giuliani to place numerous assets, including cash, jewelry and his New York apartment, into a receivership controlled by two former Georgia election workers as they seek to collect a $148 million defamation claim against the former lawyer for Donald Trump.

Americans are voting ahead of Election Day in historic numbers this year. That includes Republicans, who appear to be responding favorably to a new message from former president Donald Trump: It’s okay to vote early.

Dozens of states have opened in-person early-voting locations, and turnout has been robust. In Georgia, more than 1.6 million people had cast in-person ballots by midmorning Tuesday — nearly one-third of the total vote from four years ago. North Carolina approached 1.3 million Tuesday, the sixth day of early voting. . And in Nevada, Republicans voting in person have outnumbered Democrats — a reversal from four years ago.

DORAL, Fla. — Republican nominee Donald Trump used a racist stereotype to attack Vice President Kamala Harris and described his desire to exercise “extreme power” as president during an event Tuesday that was billed as a summit to highlight his support among Latinos.

“I was going to hit her really hard on the trail today, but now I don’t have to, because she’s off,” Trump said of Harris, who is spending the day in Washington between campaign travel on the other days of the week. “You know why? She’s lazy as hell, and she’s got that reputation.”

The Georgia Supreme Court has declined to reinstate an array of rules approved this year by a pro-Trump majority of the state’s election board that a lower court judge had tossed last week after calling them unconstitutional and void. The decision all but ensures that the rules will not be in effect for the November vote.