WASHINGTON (AP) — The last day of voting this year midterm elections arrives Tuesday against a backdrop of uncertainty after a year in which President Donald Trump tried to interfere in the way states run their elections and sowed doubt about the result in the event of a Republican defeat.
Millions of Americans have already voted, with participation in early voting poised to eclipse that of the last midterm elections. Unlike that of the president continued rhetoric about electoral cheatingthe vote has proceeded so far with relatively few problems.
Trump spent months trying to use the power of the presidency to put your thumb on the scale elections this year, which will determine whether his party retains control of Congress.
His Justice and Homeland Security departments were involved in a massive operation hunt for voters who are not US citizensat one point engaging in a designed-for-the-cameras pre-dawn operation that led to more than two dozen arrests in California. The Department of Justice was planning its the largest effort ever to monitor Election Day polls, countered by an even greater effort by Democrats and allied groups, and at the urging of the president, sued to block certification results from Alaska if the outcome of the Senate race favored the Democrats.
At the same time, Trump’s consistent false claims of widespread voter fraud have led election officials and Democratic groups across the country to plan for the possibility of immigration officers at polling places or federal agents seizing voting machines. His administration insisted that no armed federal officials would guard polling stations on Election Day.
As Tuesday approached, none of the measures Democrats feared most had been passed, and the administration’s legal maneuvers had been largely blocked by the courts. One of the administration’s highest-profile attempts to interfere in the nation’s elections was rejected Monday night by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled rejected his push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots as part of its search for non-citizen voters.
Even that of the administration record of arrests and charges demonstrated what research and state investigations have made it clear for years – that cases of non-citizens voting are extremely rare.
Monday’s decision follows another defeat by the president at the Supreme Court. when less than two months ago he rejected his attempt to limit mail-in voting thanks to changes within the postal service. This directive was included in one of the two decrees Trump signed an attempt during his second term to federalize certain aspects of electionseven though the Constitution gives states, and sometimes Congress, the power to set election rules.
On Tuesday, the first polls were scheduled to open at 6 a.m. in a handful of states: Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.
Heavy rain and flash flooding in part of the southwest over the weekend is expected to make it harder for some voters to reach polling places in parts of Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Most polling locations have not changed, although it is possible more changes will be announced as officials assess the situation.
Election administrators and voting rights advocates advise voters who cast absentee ballots late to use drop boxes or deliver them in person to polling places rather than sending them by mail. This advice came after concerns were raised over the recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations could cause delays in postmarking, which would mean mail-in ballots could not be counted. Late-arriving ballots or late postmarks disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in California, Oregon and Washington, which are sending ballots to all voters in this year’s primaries.
The most significant disruptions in the run-up to Election Day were attempts at interference by the Trump administration. Voting rights groups, Democrats and the Justice Department have traded a series of legal briefs regarding purported non-citizen voters, federal election observers, federal intimidation of election officials and other concerns. They reveal how Trump’s attempts to expand federal control over state-run elections — combined with high-stakes races — are leading to court battles that could extend beyond Election Day to the counting of ballots and certification of results.
Election law experts said Trump’s lawsuits went beyond historical norms, but said the administration’s legal arguments were unlikely to convince the courts.
Trump also escalated his own personal equivocations about the legitimacy of the election, as he has in the past. A week before Election Day, when a reporter asked him if he would accept the results, he offered a nuanced response.
“I will if they are honest,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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