US Election Day voting unfolds smoothly with some scattered issues, delays

Election Day voting unfolded largely smoothly across the nation Tuesday with only scattered reports of delays from extreme weather, ballot printing errors and technical problems.

Most of the hiccups occurring by midday were largely expected routine and planned-for events, said Cait Conley, senior adviser to the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a press briefing. She said the agency was not currently tracking any national, significant incidents impacting election security.

In swing-state Pennsylvania, early reports that Republican poll watchers were not allowed into some polling sites were soon resolved. A Pennsylvania state judge ordered polls to remain open for two extra hours in Cambria County, which voted 68 per cent for former President Donald Trump in 2020. The county sought the extension after a software malfunction affected ballot-scanning machines, though county officials confirmed no one was turned away from the polls and said all ballots would be counted.

 

A technical malfunction in Champaign County, Illinois, and challenges with e-pollbooks in Louisville, Kentucky, also delayed voting, but those issues were soon fixed and voting was back up and running. In Arizona's Maricopa County, one voting location was slightly delayed when a worker forgot to bring a key.

In Missouri, flooding made one St. Louis area polling site hard to reach and knocked out power to another, requiring poll workers to turn to a generator to continue election operations. Still, in various states affected by rain, voters were enthusiastically huddling under umbrellas as they lined up to cast their ballots.

We'll be like post office workers: in rain or snow or sleet, voter Mary Roszkowski said after she cast her ballot in windy Racine, Wisconsin, wiping raindrops off her face.

In Maine, at least three high schools that served as polling places were subjected to false reports of shooters, but voting continued uninterrupted as police confirmed the calls were hoaxes. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said there were some reported bomb threats to polling places, but all were deemed non-credible and authorities were investigating.

The FBI on Tuesday afternoon said it was aware of multiple non-credible bomb threats to polling locations in several states and said many of them appeared to originate from Russian email domains.  Find special coverage on US Presidential Elections here

Helping voting run relatively smoothly on Election Day was the fact that tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots. Those included record numbers of voters in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

As of Tuesday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed more than 82 million ballots already cast slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That's driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats' longstanding advantage in the early vote.

Early in-person and mail voting proceeded without major problems, besides some typical glitches expected in any election. That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads. That appeared to continue on Tuesday, with the North Carolina Board of Elections reporting no voting issues.

Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible.

The absence of any significant, widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, which is now under his sway, from making numerous claims of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day.

Trump and Republicans also have warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that runs counter to the data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote is rare. Any noncitizen who does faces the potential of felony charges and deportation, a significant disincentive.

One case of noncitizen voting was caught during early voting last month and resulted in felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early ballot.

This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to fight like hell.

Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump's lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden's win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more sceptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.

Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements.

On the last weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was being rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all the ballots are counted.

Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump's tactic of casting doubt on elections. The Democratic nominee told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people that if they vote, their vote won't matter. Instead, she urged people who had already cast ballots to encourage their friends to do the same.

Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass.

While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, US intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states.

On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast.

Jen Easterly, the nation's top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections.

This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before, she said. We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.