and I'm joined in the studio now by our International Affairs editor kavan cordani hi kavan would you take us through this famously complicated system well uh there is what is called early voting and it's something that really got the spotlight in 2020 because of the covid uh pandemic and the numbers really show how that early voting has expanded over the years in 240% of us voters had access to some form of early voting in 2024 that number is now to 90 7% uh and we're going to go through uh this map that you see there the voting option by state basically you have 36 states that offered both early in person meaning you go to a polling station you cast your Ballot or mailin options that are known as no excuse mailin ballots meaning that anybody can vote by mail no excuses needed States like California or Hawaii for example even send those mailin ballots automatically you don't even have to request them you get them and then you make your choice in person or uh by mail then you have uh the 11 states in Orange uh States like uh Texas like Louisiana Tennessee these are states that offer also that early inperson uh voting to everyone but they have certain eligibility criteria for those who want to vote by mail for example you can uh have an age criteria those older than 65 uh the people who are disabled people who might be traveling during the election uh period but you have to give an actual excuse and then finally you have those three states in red uh Alabama Mississippi and New Hampshire uh these are the three states where you don't have any form of in-person early voting and uh the mailin ballots also have some uh requirements uh in order to be doing that so they mostly vote in person on Election Day but you're going to see uh really something that we saw in 2020 happen very likely because if you look at the numbers in 2020 it's pretty incredible there were 158 million Americans who cast their ballot more than 100 million of those uh did it early in some way or another you see there only 27 people uh 27 uh% of people voted in person on Election Day and nearly 2/3 of uh us voters voted early 27% decided to do it early in person 46% decided to vote by mail and of course this has a little bit of an impact on the results of the election because there is a political split between uh those who vote early those who vote by mail and those who vote uh on Election Day traditionally and generally speaking Trump voters are more likely to vote either early in person but even more likely to vote on Election Day and uh Democratic voters so the Biden voters in 2020 and likely the comma Harris voters this time are more likely to vote early in person or by mail and less likely to vote on Election Day so it is a very complicated system but that is to say that not everybody is going to wait until November 5th to actually cast their balance now of course uh Trump and Harris had their first and possibly uh it's important to say their last uh televised uh debate on Tuesday we've had the first uh polls since then on voting intentions what can you tell us about where the race stands at this moment in time look it's always hard to predict the impact of a debate on the final result but what we know is that the first polling uh post debate polling that we see seems to be indicating that uh kamla Harris got a little bit of a bump at least for now from that debate that uh an overwhelming number of viewers thought she actually uh won and several National polls show that uh she's maybe got a bump of one or maybe two uh points uh better than what was the situation right before the debate which was this talk of that her momentum had sort of stalled but we know that National polls are not really uh anything of uh importance in US elections it's the Battle Ground state that are important and we're uh looking there at what the situation is you have basically seven states those States in yellow that are the Battleground States the picture right now is that Harris is a little bit ahead in Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Trump is a little bit ahead in Georgia and Arizona and Nevada and North Carolina are tied the important part is you have to get to 270 Electoral College vote and for kamla Harris that 270 goes through the blue wall Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Katan G thank you very much