Election scrutiny high, but no big hitches yet reported as voting begins
Final voting began without major hitches Tuesday in midterm elections under intense scrutiny after two years of false claims and conspiracy theories about how ballots are cast and counted.
With polls open across most of the country, no big problems were reported early on, though there were hiccups in some places, which is typical on any Election Day.
For example, vote tabulators malfunctioned in a county in New Jersey and one in Arizona -potentially requiring handcounting instead; some voting sites in Pennsylvania were delayed in opening because workers showed up late, and others scrambled to replenish supplies of paper ballots that were running low.
"These are things we see in every election cycle," said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause, a group that advocates for voting access. "There's nothing majorly concerning this morning."
Since the last nationwide election in 2020, former President Donald Trump and his allies have succeeded in sowing wide distrust about voting by promoting false claims of extensive fraud. The effort has eroded public confidence in elections and democracy, led to restrictions on mail voting and new ID requirements in some GOP-led states and prompted death threats against election officials.
Election Day this year is marked by concerns about further harassment and the potential for disruptions at polling places and at election offices where ballots will be tallied. Election officials say they are prepared to handle any issues that arise, urging voters not to be deterred.
Trouble with vote-tabulation machines at 20% of polling places in Maricopa County, Arizona, generated criticism on social media but a spokesperson for the state's elections department said the problem was minor.
"Voters have options," spokesperson Megan Gilbertson said. "They can wait to put their ballot in the working tabulator, they can use the secure drop box, or they can go to another voting center if they don't want to wait."
Maricopa is the most populous county in Arizona, a place where elections for governor and U.S. Senate are expected to be close and a state where skepticism of election systems has run deep among Republicans since 2020.
In Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, several polling places needed their supply of ballots replenished. County solicitor Mike Butera said no voters were turned away and that more ballots were being delivered to every precinct.
Before the pandemic, many states had begun to shift away from a single day of voting to offer days or weeks of early, in-person voting and ballots sent through the mail.
No major problems were reported during the early voting period.