Election Day is here, after tens of millions have already cast their ballots

WASHINGTON – Election Day 2024 arrived on Tuesday – tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots. That includes record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

Early voter turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic candidates in the previous two presidential elections, was so strong — more than 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the day the big one could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.

As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of early voting nationwide showed that about 82 million ballots had already been cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes cast in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s driven in part by Republican voters voting early at a higher rate than in the last previous election, after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ long-standing advantage in early voting.

Despite long lines in some places and a few hiccups that are common to all elections, early in-person and mail-in voting went off without major hiccups.

They are included in the parts of western North Carolina hit last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled Legislature, made a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots while dealing with power outages, water shortages and washed-out roads.

By Saturday, when early voting in North Carolina ended, more than 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57 percent of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots. As of Monday, voter turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger, at 59 percent of registered voters, said state Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell.

Brinson Bell called the voters and election workers in the counties affected by the hurricane “an inspiration to us all.”

Besides hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most troubling disruptions of the election season so far have been arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were looking for the person responsible.

The absence of any significant and widespread problems hasn’t stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC now under his control, from making numerous claims of election fraud or interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after the election. Day.

He mischaracterized an ongoing investigation in Pennsylvania into about 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications, saying one of the counties was “caught with 2,600 fake ballots and forms, all written by the same person “. The inquiry relates to registration applications; there is no indication that ballots are involved.

In Georgia, Republicans tried to bar voters from returning mail-in ballots to their local election office until after polls close on Election Day, which is allowed under state law. A judge dismissed their lawsuit over the weekend.

Trump and Republicans have also warned about the possibility of Democrats recruiting masses of non-citizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and at odds with data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that non-citizens who register to vote are rare. Any non-citizen facing the potential for criminal charges and deportation, a significant deterrent.

A case of non-citizen voting was caught during early voting last month and led to felony charges in Michigan after a student from China illegally early voted.

This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and has begun various attempts to circumvent the result and stay in power. This culminated in the January 6, 2021 violent attack on the US Capitol to stop the certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”.

Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite analysis, audits and recounts in battleground states that all affirmed Biden’s win. A poll last month by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that Republicans remain far more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.

Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system beset by false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states in 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window for applying or returning a mail-in ballot, reducing the availability of ballot boxes and adding identification requirements.

In the final weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was rigged against him and said a presidential winner should be declared on election night before all the ballots are counted.

Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on the election. The Democratic candidate told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was meant to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t count.” Instead, she urged those who have already voted to encourage their friends to do the same.

Throughout four years of election lies and conspiracy theories surrounding the vote, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. This prompted high turnover and led to increased security for election offices and polling places, which include panic buttons and bulletproof glass.

While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyber activity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and sites to generate partisan vitriol and misinformation. In recent weeks, US intelligence officials have attributed several fake videos alleging election fraud in swing states to Russia.

On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia, in particular, is stepping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and is likely to continue those efforts for much longer. after the votes have been cast. .

Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for election information.

“This is especially important because we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation that is being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries on a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”

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