WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 and sown doubts about the outcome should Republicans lose.
That directive was included in one of two executive orders Trump has signed during his second term that attempted to federalize certain aspects of elections , even though the Constitution gives the states, and sometimes Congress, the authority to set election rules. Millions of Americans already have cast their ballots, with early voting turnout on pace to eclipse that of the last midterm elections two years ago. In contrast to the president’s continued rhetoric about election cheating , voting so far has unfolded with relatively few problems. Trump has spent months trying to use the power of the presidency to put his thumb on the scale of this year’s elections, which will determine whether his party keeps control of Congress. His Justice and Homeland Security departments have been involved in a massive hunt for voters who are not U.S. citizens , at one point engaging in a made-for-the-cameras predawn operation that led to more than two dozen arrests in California . 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, and at the president’s urging had sued to block certification of Alaska’s results if the outcome of the Senate race favored Democrats. At the same time, Trump’s constant false claims about widespread voter fraud led election officials and Democratic groups across the country to plan for the possibility of immigration agents at voting sites or federal officers seizing voting machines. His administration has insisted that no armed federal officials would be guarding the polls on Election Day. Monday’s ruling followed another defeat for the president at the Supreme Court when less than two months ago it rejected his attempt to limit mail balloting through changes at the Postal Service . 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. The advice came after concerns emerged that recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations could result in postmarking delays that would mean mail ballots could not be counted. Late-arriving ballots or late postmarks disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in California, Oregon and Washington, which mail ballots to all voters, during this year’s primaries. The most significant disruptions ahead of Election Day were the Trump administration’s attempts to interfere. Voting rights groups, Democrats and the Justice Department have been exchanging a flurry of legal filings over alleged noncitizen voters, federal election monitors, 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 resulting in court battles that could extend past Election Day into ballot counting and certification of the results.
