Technology

Voting in the U.S. can be confusing. By design, every state is different. On top of that, disinformation meant to discourage voting is rampant this election. Cut through the noise, arm yourself with the facts and vote. We&ve got resources to help you.

1. Fill out a sample ballot for your state

If you&re not voting absentee or by mail, ithelpful to have an idea of everything thaton the ballot before you head into vote in person. Before you head to the polls, you can fill out a sample ballot through When We All Voteor an even more comprehensive one onBallotpediarepresenting your state and local races online. Best yet, you can print, email or screenshot that and take it in with you to have a reference for your IRL voting experience so that you don&t get overwhelmed.

2. Know your rights

With rampant disinformation actively discouraging some people from going to the polls, itvital that you know your rights on Tuesday. Nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org offers a guide to common problems encountered at polling places. Run into trouble Call the Election Protection Hotline at 866-687-8683 for help. Whatever you do, don&t get discouraged — there are volunteers and organizations that can help sort things out.

Look over Vote.org&s list of common election day problems so you know what to do in case something goes awry.

If you aren&t yet registered to vote but decide that you&d like to (do it!), 18 states and the District of Columbia offer same-day registration that allows you to register and vote at the same time. Be prepared to provide an official ID and prove your residency with a utility bill, though be sure to look up the specific requirements of your state before you show up.

3. Find Your Polling Place

Figuring out where to vote and getting there is half the battle. Vote.org provides a useful polling place locator so you can look up the nearest place to cast your vote. This is important. &Polling locations are assigned by residential address,& USA.gov explains. &You should go to your assigned location since your name will not be on the roster at any other location. Your polling place may change from one election to the next, so check before you go to vote.&

If you try to vote at a polling place that isn&t the one you are assigned, you might have to fill out a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots are for &a voter whose eligibility to vote cannot be proven at the polls on Election Day& and Ballotpedia has a full guide to state by state practices for counting votes by provisional ballot. Be sure to check your stateguidelines and proceed with caution — some states will not count a provisional ballot cast in the wrong precinct. The ACLU also provides a polling place guide as well as other state-specific resources worth a look.

4. Get to the polls

If you know where you need to be but are worried about getting there, a few tech transportation companies are running Election Day promos. The bike-sharing company Motivate will offer free rides for anyone in the Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Jersey City, New York City, Portland, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

If you need a ride to the polls, Uber users in the U.S. can cash in on a $10 ride credit using the code &VOTE2018.& For Election Day, Lyft partnered with BuzzFeed to provide 50 percent off of rides using a special ZIP code-specific promo code and will also provide free rides to people in some underserved communities in partnership with some nonprofit partners, including Voto Latino, Urban League affiliates, the National Federation of the Blind, Faith in Action, League of Women Voters, and the Student Vets of America. To check on those rides, check out or get in touch with the relevant organization.

Quick links:

Tl; dr Herewhat you need:

• Fill out and email or print a sample ballot
• Find your poll location
• Know your rightsbefore you vote

And again, if you have any issues at the polls you can call Contact the Election Protection Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE and the Department of Justice Voting Rights Hotline (800-253-3931).

Apple has rolled out watchOS 5.1.1, less than a week after the company pulled its immediate predecessor, watchOS 5.1, following reports that the software was bricking some Apple Watches.

The update also includes bug fixes for the Walkie-Talkie app and an additional issue where some Activity rewards were not displayed.

watchOS 5.1 initially went out Tuesday alongside iOS 12.1but was quickly withdrawn after some complained that their Apple Watch failed to load after installing the software update. Apple confirmed the buggy update affected a &small number& of customers — without elaborating — but that, &any customers impacted should contact AppleCare, but no action is required if the update installed successfully.&

watchOS 5.1.1 comes with all the trimmings of watchOS 5.1 — but with some new additions, including Group FaceTime audio calls, new emoji and a range of new watch face options.

The update also comes with security updates and patches, including several nasty vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to gain kernel-level privileges.

Augmented reality is certainly the gimmick du jour these days. Case in point: ABC News is covering tomorrowU.S. midterms using a custom-made 360-degree stage and AR technology. The media organization posted a behind-the-scenes look at its glitzy and over-the-top &Election Headquarters& AR-powered stage on its Sunday political affairs program &This Week,& and today published a 360-degree video of the stage to Facebook.

The set itself took around six months to build and seven weeks to load into the studio, says ABC. Thata lot of work considering that the set is temporary — it will be taken down around a week after the election.

Itpretty massive, too. The setparts were being manufactured in Wilmington, North Carolina, which was impacted by the hurricane. The supplies for the stagelarge, ring boundaries were on some of the last trucks out of the city, but the rest of it was created piecemeal — filling eight tractor-trailers with more than 25,000 square feet of scenery, notes ABC.

Meanwhile, the augmented reality portion took a year of planning, designing and programming, including 700 to 1,000 hours of data testing.The graphics required approximately 36,000 lines of computer code and more than 1,000 AR tracking markers to be placed within the set, according toABC News Director of Graphics Operations Tamar Gargle and Creative Director Hal Aronow-Theil.

&We have had consultants from three vendors: Astucemedia, who are our graphics and creative consultants; Vizrt, for the graphics engines and graphics tracking; and Mo-Sys, the camera-tracking system,& Gargle said, in a statement released by ABC News this afternoon.

ABC says the goal is to give viewers data without having to cut away to full-screen graphics.

Instead, the system will project AR images through the combination of an optical tracking system mounted to studio cameras that communicate with the real-time 3D graphics system.

&There is a web of tracking markers, essentially reflective stickers, that have been applied to the lighting grid and the set pieces that are in the ceiling. The tracking system uses those markers in conjunction with sensors attached to the cameras to calculate where the camera is in ‘space&,& explained Gargle. &This data is sent to our graphics system, which maps the graphics to the proper place in ‘real& space so it appears that the graphic is in the room.&

Included in the augmented display is a 3D image of the U.S. Capital and the seats within the House and Senate, showing real-time election result data.

This is not the first time ABC has experimented with using AR for news coverage.

The company tried AR when covering the British royal wedding earlier this year, and did an AR medical story on &Good Morning America& to show a 3D view of a heart, to help people understand heart disease.

However, itnot clear that using AR to show off election results actually helps people better understand the data — especially when compared with something like giving people a look inside a human heart, which can be harder to visualize.

In fact, the technology, glitz and glamour used here could end up being a distraction — a way to draw in viewers more attracted to a spectacle, at a time when politics itself is one. If anything is needed, ita reverse from over-the-top media showmanship to one where news is reported with a little more gravity and a little less pizzazz.