U.S. Election Day begins Tuesday with the first polling sites scheduled to open at 6 a.m. in several states after a large surge in early voting and months of court battles over election oversight.
The Story
The final day of voting in this year’s U.S. midterm elections arrives Tuesday after millions of Americans already cast ballots and early voting turnout is on pace to exceed that of the last midterm two years ago.
The campaign season has been shaped by President Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere in how states run elections, alongside rhetoric that Democratic and election officials feared could translate into disruptions on Election Day even as voting so far has had relatively few problems.
Election administration steps planned for Tuesday come amid legal activity reaching the highest court level, including a Monday night U.S. Supreme Court decision that rejected an administration push for California to set aside thousands of ballots as part of a search for noncitizen voters.
The administration has pursued multiple legal avenues connected to noncitizen voting, federal election monitoring and alleged intimidation at polling places, while Democrats and voting rights groups filed countermeasures; those disputes are described as likely to extend into the period after Election Day into ballot counting and certification.
Trump’s administration has also described policing voter eligibility as a priority, including investigations involving the Justice and Homeland Security departments that led to more than two dozen arrests in California during a predawn operation.
On Tuesday, voting sites were scheduled to open at 6 a.m. in Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.
In parts of the Southwest, heavy rains and flash flooding expected over the weekend were forecast to make travel harder for some voters in areas of Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, although polling place locations have largely not changed; officials said additional modifications were possible as conditions are assessed.
Election administrators and voting rights advocates advised people voting with late absentee ballots to use drop boxes or deliver ballots to polling places in person rather than mail them, citing concerns that changes in U.S. Postal Service operations could produce postmarking delays.
The guidance was issued after similar postmark timing issues in primaries this year in California, Oregon and Washington reportedly led late-arriving ballots or late postmarks to be excluded for tens of thousands of voters.
Even as the administration insisted there would be no armed federal officials guarding polls on Election Day, court setbacks included the Supreme Court rejecting an effort to limit mail balloting through Postal Service changes less than two months ago.
A week before Election Day, when asked whether he would accept the results, Trump said: “I will if they are honest.”
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