Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks as former first lady Melania Trump listens after they voted on Election Day at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Donald Trump carried Ohio for a third time on Tuesday, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to capture the state’s 17 electoral votes.

Support for the former president helped turn Ohio from a presidential bellwether to reliably Republican in recent years. Ohio voters supported him by wide margins in 2016 and 2020, and they delivered for him again this year. No Republican has reached the White House without carrying Ohio. In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the presidency without winning Ohio since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The Associated Press declared Trump the winner in Ohio at 9:08 p.m.

The nationwide race between Trump and Harris remained too close to call at press time. Polls had closed but votes were still being counted in closely fought battleground states.

Reports indicated that voting went relatively smoothly across the nation with record turnout among early voters prior to Election Day.

However, a judge ordered polling places to remain open two extra hours in nine precincts in an eastern Arizona county after a rocky start to Election Day that included malfunctioning equipment and a lack of printed ballots.

Apache County Superior Court Judge Michael Latham agreed to keep the polls open at the request of the Navajo Nation, which filed a lawsuit asking for extended hours due to the problems.

Meanwhile, bomb threats to polling places at schools in neighboring Navajo County prompted some to close momentarily and one to evacuate and send students home for the day.

Authorities said they received email bomb threats at four locations in Navajo County, including at least three polling sites. They determined the threats were not credible.

In Massachusetts, the group Lawyers for Civil Rights warned that multiple precincts in Boston ran out of ballots, including in the city’s Hyde Park, Roslindale and West Roxbury neighborhoods.

In some locations, ballots were replenished but only after wait times of up to two hours, the group said.

The secretary of the commonwealth’s office said the Boston Elections Department opted not to send all their ballots to polling places.

Secretary of State William Galvin told the department to send ballots using police cars. Poll workers were also told get contact information for voters who chose not to wait. Those voters have been contacted and anyone in line at 8 p.m. will be able to vote.

And in Georgia, 32 of the 177 polling places in Fulton County received bomb threats Tuesday, county Police Chief W. Wade Yates said. Some of the threats were called directly into the locations where voting was happening, while others were called into 911 or received by email, he said.

As a result, voting hours were extended at five polling places in Georgia’s Fulton County that were briefly closed because of bomb threats that were determined to be non-credible. Each voting location’s hours have were extended for as long as they were closed. The extensions ranged from 10 minutes at one location to 45 minutes at two locations.