Election Day Arrives After a Surge in Early Voting, With Observers Keeping Close Watch at the Polls
The Associated Press reports the Justice Department planned its largest-ever Election Day monitoring effort, countered by an even larger effort among Democrats and allied groups; New Jersey is among the first states where polls were scheduled to open, at 6 a.m.
The final day of voting in this year's midterm elections arrives Tuesday against a backdrop of uncertainty after a year in which President Donald Trump has tried to interfere in how states run their elections, the Associated Press reported in a file read in full this run. Millions of Americans have already cast their ballots, with early voting turnout on pace to eclipse that of the last midterm elections, and voting so far has unfolded with relatively few problems, AP reported.
The Department of Justice was planning its largest-ever effort to monitor Election Day polling places, countered by an even larger effort among Democrats and allied groups, AP reported. The administration has insisted that no armed federal officials would be guarding the polls on Election Day. On Monday night, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the administration's push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots as part of its search for noncitizen voters — one of its most high-profile attempts to intervene in a state election, turned away on the eve of the vote.
On Tuesday, the first polling sites 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, AP reported. For Newark and Essex County voters, that 6 a.m. opening runs to an 8 p.m. close, the hours this station has published through its Election Day guides.
Heavy rains and flash flooding in a swath of the Southwest over the weekend were expected to make it harder for some voters to reach polling places in parts of Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, AP reported, though most polling locations had not changed. Election administrators and voting rights advocates have been advising voters casting late absentee ballots to use drop boxes or deliver them to polling places in person rather than mail them, after concerns that Postal Service changes could mean postmarking delays.
