Latest / Best of: Features / Election Day arrives after a surge in early voting, with observers keeping close watch at the polls

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Election Day arrives after a surge in early voting, with observers keeping close watch at the polls · Best of: Features

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  Election day arrives after a surge in early voting, with observers keeping
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  close watch at the polls. This article
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  is being read by an automated voice generated by Everlet. Washington, the
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  AP. The final day of voting in this year's midterm elections arrives
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  Tuesday against a backdrop of uncertainty, after a year in which President
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  Donald Trump has tried to interfere in how States run their elections.
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  And sown doubts about the outcome should Republicans lose. Millions of Americans
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  already have cast their ballots, with early voting turnout on pace to
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  eclipse that of the last midterm elections. In contrast to the President's
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  continued rhetoric about elections, cheating, voting so far has unfolded with relatively
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  few problems. Trump has spent months trying to use the power of
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  the presidency to put his thumb on the scale of this year's
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  elections, which will determine whether his party keeps control of Congress. His
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  justice and Homeland Security Department have been involved in a massive hunt
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  for voters who are not US citizens, at one point engaging in
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  a made for the Cameras pre dawn operation that led to more
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  than two dozen arrests in California. The Department of Justice was planning
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  its largest ever effort to monitor Election Day polling places, countered by
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  an even larger effort among Democrats and Allied groups, and at the
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  President's urging had sued to block certification of Alaska's results if the
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  outcome of the Senate race favored Democrats. At the same time, Trump's
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  constant false claims about widespread voter fraud led election officials and Democratic
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  groups across the country to plan for the possibility of immigration agents
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  at voting sites or federal officers seizing voting machines. His administration has
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  insisted that no armed federal officials would be guarding the polls on
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  Election Day. In the run up to Tuesday, none of the steps
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  Democrats most feared had come to pass, and the
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  administration's legal maneuvers had been largely blocked by the courts. One of
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  the administration's most high profile attempts to interfere in state elections was
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  turned away Monday night by the U.S. Supreme Court which rejected its
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  push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots as part
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  of its search for non citizen voters. Even the administration's own record
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  of arrests and charges has demonstrated what research and state investigations have
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  made clear for years, that instances of non citizens casting ballots are
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  extremely rare. Monday's ruling followed another defeat for the President at the
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  Supreme Court, when less than two months ago it rejected his attempt
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  to limit mail balloting through changes at the Postal Service. That directive
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  was included in one of two executive orders Trump has signed during
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  his second term that attempted to federalize certain aspects of elections, even
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  though the Constitution gives the states, and sometimes Congress, the authority to
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  set election rules. On Tuesday, the first polling sites were scheduled to
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  open at six AM in a handful of states Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky,
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  Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. Heavy rains and
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  flash flooding in a swath of them southwest over the weekend were
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  expected to make it harder for some voters to reach polling places
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  in parts of Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Most polling place locations
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  have not changed, though it's possible more modifications will be announced as
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  officials assess the situation. Election administrators and voting rights advocates have been
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  advising voters casting late absentee ballots to use drop boxes or deliver
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  them to polling places in person rather than mail them. The advice
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  came after concerns emerged that recent changes in US Postal Service operations
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  could result in postmarking delays that would mean mail ballots could not
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  be counted. Late arriving ballots or late postmarks disenfranchise tens of thousands
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  of voters in California, Oregon, and Washington, which mail ballots to all
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  voters during this year's primaries. The most significant disruptions ahead of Election
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  Day were the Trump administration's attempts to interfere. Voting rights groups, Democrats,
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  and the Justice Department have been exchanging a flurry of legal filings
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  over alleged non citizens voters, federal election monitors, federal intimidation of election
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  officials, and other concerns. The reveal how Trump's attempts to expand federal
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  control over state run Election combined with high stakes races, are resulting
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  in court bot battles that could extend past election day into ballot
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  counting and certification of the results. Election law experts said Trump's lawsuits
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  go beyond historic norms, but said the administration's legal arguments were unlikely
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  to convince the courts. Trump also has ramped up his own personal
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  equivocations about whether the election will be legitimate, as he has in
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  the past. A week before Election Day, when a reporter asked him
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  if he would accept the results, he offered a qualified answer. I
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  will if they are honest, he said. Associated Press Writer Jeff Mulvahill
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  in Haddonfield, New Jersey, contributed to this report.