The final day of voting in the US is here after tens of millions have already voted – Las Vegas Sun

WASHINGTON — Election Day 2024. came Tuesday — tens of millions of Americans have already voted. They include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

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

As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of early voting across the country showed an estimated 82 million ballots already cast — just over half the total votes cast in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s due in part to Republican voters voting early at a higher rate than in the last previous election following 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 places and a few hiccups common to all elections, early in-person and postal voting went off without a hitch.

That includes the parts of western North Carolina hit last month by Hurricane Helena. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled Legislature, made a Herculean effort to ensure residents could vote while dealing with power outages, water shortages and muddy roads.

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

Brinson Bell called voters and poll workers in hurricane-stricken counties “an inspiration to us all.”

Aside from hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most troubling disruption to the election season so far was arson that damaged ballots in two ballot boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. The authorities there were looking for the culprit.

The lack of significant, widespread problems hasn’t stopped Trump, the Republican nominee or the RNC he now oversees, from making numerous allegations of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges after Election Day .

He has mischaracterized an ongoing investigation in Pennsylvania into about 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications, saying one county was “caught with 2,600 fake ballots and forms, all written by the same person.” The investigation is on applications for registration; there is no indication that ballots are included.

In Georgia, Republicans tried to bar voters from returning mail-in ballots to local election offices until polls close on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge dismissed their case over the weekend.

Trump and Republicans have also warned about the possibility of Democrats recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they made without evidence and contradicted by data, including from Republican secretaries of state. Research consistently shows that non-citizens registering to vote are rare. Any non-citizen who does so faces potential felony charges and deportation, a significant deterrent.

One case of non-citizen voting was caught during early voting last month and led to felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early vote.

It is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and launched various attempts to circumvent the result and stay in power. This culminated in the violent attack on January 6, 2021. against the US Capitol to stop 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 reviews, audits and recounts in battleground states that all confirmed Biden’s victory. A poll last month by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that Republicans remain far more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.

Seeking to restore voter confidence in a system beset by false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020. since then they have adopted new voting restrictions. These rules include shortening the window for applying or returning a mail-in ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements.

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

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

During four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. This led to high turnover and led to increased security for electoral offices and polling stations, which included panic buttons and bulletproof glass.

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

In the run-up to Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement 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 beyond submission of votes.

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

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