For non-US residents interested in the US election today

Due to the considerable damage caused by the hurricane last week, extraordinary voting procedures are being allowed in New Jersey and New York. New Jersey allows early voting and has encouraged people to use that option leading up to today. New Jersey is also allowing voting by e-mail today, which is controversial, but should be secure as long as those votes are verified and counted manually. New York City does not have early voting, but voters will be allowed to vote where they can, rather than at their assigned poling places today, by means of a process called provisional voting. All that means is that those ballots will be handled separately from those cast normally at assigned polling places.

The result is that there is a possibility that if the Presidential election is close in those states that there will be no clear winner in those states and as a result no clear winner nationally, conceivably for days. Here in Arizona provisional ballots are not usually counted until days after the election. I'm certain that New York will do everything possible to speed up the count, but it will be a time consuming process.

If we're lucky the vote won't be close in those states and we'll all know the result of the Presidential election sooner rather than later.