Americans head to the polls on Tuesday for an election that has state and local officials across the country bracing for potential trouble at the polls, contentious legal battles over ballots and fighting misinformation about the vote itself.
More than 41 million primary ballots have been cast in 47 states, and officials expect high turnout on Election Day as well for the congressional, state and gubernatorial contests that will determine control of Congress and state legislatures.
Most of the tens of millions who will vote Tuesday will undoubtedly do so in an election where early voting was above 2018 levels.
At the same time, election officials face new pressures amid a hyper-polarized political climate that has seen the vote itself come under a constant barrage of attacks and misinformation for the better part of two years amid repeated false claims by former President Donald Trump that his election 2020 were stolen.
State and local officials and voting rights advocates have sounded the alarm that political attacks have sparked an exodus of local election officials in charge of voting amid a marked increase in threats of violence against poll workers.
Early voting provided a preview of potential problems both big and small that could arise on Election Day, from armed poll watchers in Arizona accused of conspiring to intimidate voters to a legal battle over technical errors that invalidate ballots in Pennsylvania.
In all, about 120 voting-related legal cases have been filed through Nov. 3, compared with 68 before Election Day in 2020. More than half of the cases sought to limit access to the ballot, according to Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights and media platform that tracks electoral disputes.
In Pennsylvania, some counties are urging voters to correct absentee ballots with omissions or improper dates that the state Supreme Court has ordered invalidated, while the federal legal challenge still looms. In Michigan, meanwhile, a judge threw out a lawsuit Monday by the GOP secretary of state’s nominee seeking to throw out absentee ballots in Democratic-heavy Detroit.
Cobb County, Georgia on Monday extended the deadline to submit about 1,000 absentee ballots to Nov. 14 after ballots were not mailed just days before Election Day due to procedural errors at the election office.
Beyond the legal wrangling, election officials are anticipating a potential clash with election naysayers who have harassed and threatened officials for the 2020 election and have prepared to aggressively monitor the upcoming midterm showdown.
In North Carolina, about 15 incidents of alleged intimidation have been reported to the state board of elections since early in-person voting began.
The incidents included some people outside a county board of elections taking video of a poll worker’s license plate and a situation where a poll worker was followed from the polling place to the polling station and then followed into their neighborhood.
In Arizona, the secretary of state’s office sent 18 citations to law enforcement about bullying, including a threatening message to a government employee and several voters who reported being filmed at drop box locations in Maricopa County last week. A federal judge earlier this month imposed new restrictions on a right-wing group in the state after complaints of aggressive polling patrols in the state, including barring members from openly carrying weapons or wearing body armor.
Federal officials have warned that violent domestic extremists pose an increased threat to the 2022 midterm elections.
Weather is also an unpredictable variable: In Florida, Subtropical Storm Nicole is bearing down on the state and is expected to bring rain and gusty winds to the state on Election Day before strengthening to a hurricane and making landfall on Wednesday.
As the votes come in and begin to be processed and counted on Tuesday, election officials are taking care of conspiracy theories that often spread like wildfire but are completely untrue.
Because laws in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan prevent mail-in ballots from being processed in time, those states may need several days before all votes are counted. In Pennsylvania, where the Senate race could determine which party controls the chamber, a “red mirage” is expected because Election Day votes, which are expected to include more Republicans, are likely to be cast before ballots are cast. mail, which more Democrats are expected to use.
The opposite could be true in Arizona, where mail-in ballots are processed as soon as they’re received, meaning those ballots won’t be counted until after the polls close.
