Tens of millions cast ballots for midterms despite worries of Trump's interference

Tens of millions of voters cast their ballots Tuesday without widespread disruptions despite concerns of interference by the Trump administration.

Around the country, election administrators responded to relatively common Election Day issues in some communities, from delayed poll openings and long lines to poor signage and voting equipment problems.

Polls remain open in much of the western United States until later Tuesday.

Flooding in parts of Florida and in the Four Corners states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah forced local officials to relocate some polling sites and resort to emergency ballots.

The most high-profile technical problem occurred in Westchester County, N.Y., which includes part of the state's competitive 17th Congressional District. A ballot scanner issue took much of the day to get sorted out, meaning voters had to give their ballots to election workers for scanning at a later time. Some right-wing commentators online claimed the issue was a sign of fraud, but both the Republican and Democrat running in the district told voters not to be deterred.

"Every ballot will be counted," Mike Lawler, the Republican incumbent in the district, wrote in an X post after news of the issue arose.

The Trump administration's Justice Department had announced it planned to have around 1,000 monitors at polling places on Election Day, and shortly after the first polls opened on the East Coast Tuesday, the department said it was sending monitors to observe voting in every state.

"Election integrity has been one of the top priorities for this Administration and this Division," Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.

Sending out election observers has been a routine way of documenting any racial discrimination at the polls under past administrations since the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But ongoing, baseless claims of widespread voter fraud from President Trump and other federal officials had heightened worries among many local officials and election experts that this administration's DOJ election monitors would interfere with voting at the polls.

As of Tuesday evening, however, no such activity has been reported.

But the New Mexico secretary of state's office received reports of DOJ monitors asking unusual questions and questioning voters in Bernalillo County, which is home to Albuquerque. "The New Mexico Department of Justice reached out to the DOJ Team Lead on our office's behalf to address this reported behavior, and we received assurances it would be addressed," spokesperson Lindsey Bachman said in a statement.

Concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and law enforcement presence near polling sites also did not come to pass, as of 9 p.m. ET.

Instead, voters exercised their rights on what many voting observers considered to be a fairly normal Election Day.

Their ballots on Tuesday joined more than 61 million that were already cast during early voting. Nationally, early in-person and mail-in voters cast 34% more ballots compared to the last midterm general elections in 2022, according to the latest data compiled by the University of Florida's Election Lab. The pre-Election Day surge was driven mainly by in-person voting.

As the counting of ballots continues, voting rights advocates are now looking ahead to any potential controversies over close races and the certification of results. Some election officials have also warned about ballot seizures, especially after the FBI earlier this year seized election 2020 materials from Fulton County, Ga.

"Election Day is the last day that you can cast your ballot. But election season continues after today, and we're going to continue to remain vigilant," said Shaylyn Cochran, deputy executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, during a press call on Tuesday.