Election guide 2024: What you need to know before you vote

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz (D)

Kamala Harris is the current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Joe Biden since 2021. Her takeover as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee came after Biden withdrew from the race in July.

Harris previously represented California in the U.S. Senate from 2017-21, and she was first elected to statewide office as California Attorney General in 2010. As vice president, she has cast a record 33 deciding votes in the Senate, including the deciding vote to send the Inflation Reduction Act 2022 to Biden’s desk.

Born in Oakland, California, Harris is the daughter of immigrant parents—her father immigrated from Jamaica and her mother immigrated from India. She earned degrees from Howard University and the University of California Hastings College of Law and went on to pursue a career in law, first as a prosecutor in Alameda County and later as a district attorney in San Francisco.

The vice president has campaigned to lower costs and lower taxes for working families and protect access to abortions and birth control. More information about her political views is available at her campaign website.

If elected, Harris would become the first female president and the first president of South Asian descent.

– Kyle Brown

Tim Walz currently serves as the Governor of Minnesota and was first elected to this position in 2018.

According to Harris-Walz campaign websiteWalz joined the National Guard when he was 17 and served for 24 years. He was also a teacher for about 20 years, the website says.

Walz was also elected to the US House of Representatives in Minnesota’s First Congressional District in 2006 and operated until 2019.

As governor of Minnesota, Walz oversaw the state’s COVID-19 response and used his emergency powers to sign controversial executive orders that limited capacity in restaurants and required masks in public places. He also faced criticism for his handling of the civil unrest that unfolded in the Twin Cities following the killing of George Floyd.

Since winning re-election in 2022, Walz signed bills that legalized recreational marijuana, codified the right to abortion, guaranteed free breakfast and lunch for K-12 students, and established paid family and medical leave.

— Morgan Reddekopp

Donald Trump and JD Vance (R)

Donald Trump served as the 45thth President of the United States from 2017-21. This is Trump’s third consecutive run as the Republican presidential nominee.

Despite losing the 2020 election, Trump has repeatedly claimed to have won. He has also denied allegations that he incited a crowd of supporters to storm the US capital on January 6, 2021 in a last-ditch effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

The Trump administration took a tough approach to immigration and foreign trade, erecting hundreds of miles of walls along the southern border with Mexico, replacing NAFTA with the US-Mexico-Canada agreement and imposing tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports.

President Trump also signed into law the first major overhaul of the US tax code in decades, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The law permanently lowered the corporate tax rate and sharply increased the standard deduction for individuals, while limiting the deduction for state and local income taxes.

Trump perhaps reshaped the federal judiciary, confirming more than 200 federal judges, 54 appeals judges and three Supreme Court justices to secure a 6-3 conservative majority.

The Corona pandemic dominated the last year of Trump’s tenure. He advised against mask mandates and lockdowns, but paved the way for the accelerated development of two FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines.

Trump is the only president to have been impeached twice. This year, a New York jury convicted him of 34 felony counts of falsifying business information. Sentencing in that case has been postponed until after the election; three other felony charges are pending.

A native of Queens, New York, Trump rose to prominence as a luxury real estate mogul and gained further fame through his book “The Art of the Deal” and his reality TV show “The Apprentice.” He is a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania.

If elected, Trump will join Grover Cleveland as the second president to serve two non-consecutive terms. Read more about his political platform at his campaign website.

– Kyle Brown

Ohioans first elected JD Vance for the US Senate in 2022. His seat was previously held by Republican Rob Portman, who retired, The Associated Press reports.

Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps around 2005 and served in Iraq. He completed his undergraduate studies at Ohio State University and went on to graduate from Yale Law School. He also worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.

He also wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir about growing up in Middletown, Ohio, which was made into a Netflix movie.

While he was a “never Trump” Republican in 2016, he reversed his opinion when Trump endorsed him in 2021.

The AP also reports that Vance sometimes embraces bipartisanship, such as when he co-sponsored a rail safety bill following the train derailment in the small Ohio town of East Palestine. He also sponsored legislation to expand and increase funding for Great Lakes restoration and has supported bipartisan legislation to boost workers and families.

— Morgan Reddekopp

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