Election Day dominated the hour, and the main story is election administration. In Westchester County, ballot scanners at 332 polling places stopped accepting paper ballots, potentially affecting up to 250,000 ballots in a county that covers roughly 30% of New York's 17th District ¹, where Rep. Mike Lawler is in a close race with Democrat Cait Conley ². County Executive Kenneth Jenkins blamed a barcode or programming error ^1,2, while the Board of Elections has given no cause ¹. Unscannable ballots are going into orange emergency bags to be counted after polls close ². Federal pressure on the vote is rising alongside these glitches. A US appeals court again paused an order that had barred the Trump administration from pressing state and local officials to discard certain ballots and threaten prosecutions ³. Separately, the Justice Department has sent more than a dozen target letters in its probe tied to the Dan Sullivan campaign in Alaska ⁴, including one to Democratic attorney Marc Elias ⁵. Fraud claims are also surging on X as voting problems spread ⁶. Markets lean heavily toward Democrats: Kalshi volume topped $1.4 billion, with traders pricing Democrats at 93% to win the House and 73% to win the Senate ⁷. House Majority PAC, by contrast, calls a 225-to-230-seat majority the realistic outcome ⁸. DeSantis said the Iran war and the fuel costs it has driven up are a drag on Republicans ⁹. The Iran conflict's costs show up well beyond US politics. Von der Leyen said Europe's import bill has risen by €127 billion since Hormuz was effectively shut, with no added supply ¹⁰. Saudi Arabia's quarterly deficit more than doubled on war disruptions ¹¹. Trump said the US will end its $4 billion in yearly aid to Israel at year's end ¹². Israel reportedly told skeptical US and Gulf officials that Iran may use chemical weapons ¹³. On Ukraine, Russia launched at least 289 drones and 76 missiles at power sites overnight ¹⁴, ahead of a White House meeting Melania Trump will host on Nov. 5 ¹⁵ and trilateral talks set for Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11 . In markets, AI spending is the common thread. Apple warned that memory costs and AI investment will squeeze margins ¹⁶. Anthropic plans more than $895 billion in spending as it nears an IPO ¹⁷. Marvell agreed to buy Lumentum in a $115 billion deal to capitalize on data center spending ¹⁸. Blackstone's Jon Gray warned that AI infrastructure's reliance on debt carries systemic risk ¹⁹. Copper hit a seven-week low as traders weighed the AI trade and US-Iran diplomacy hopes ²⁰.