Trump and his supporters took action after unprecedented threats posed to election officials after a two-year promise to flood polling stations and polling places with partisan observers to hunt down suspected fraud. After posting on an internet chat after calling for the machines to be ditched in favor of counting on the It just collected voter turnout and scattered reports of problems.
Election officials attributed the relative normalcy to the concerted efforts of well-prepared pollsters and voters, and the fact that some of Trump’s most vocal supporters were more likely than they claimed to be. The basic dynamics of midterm elections – always less enthusiasm than presidential elections, voters never rallying around a single candidate. – also played a role.
Then there was the Trump factor.45th The president no longer had a White House or Twitter megaphone to deliver his message to his supporters in real time.And the election results suggest how many tend to respond to Trump’s exhortations. It has continued to drop since he lost the 2020 election.
Adam Witt, Clerk of Harrison Township, Michigan and president of the state’s Association of Municipal Clerks, said:
According to Witt, election officials could open doors before Election Day to explain how the ballot counting system works, use social media to educate voters, and hold public briefings. “Clerks did a lot to restore confidence,” he said.
Officials also responded to disinformation much more quickly than they did in 2020, using social media to stifle the embers of unsubstantiated accusations and rumors before wildfires even broke out.
Within an hour of Trump’s post on the alleged issue of absentee ballots, Michigan Secretary of State Joslyn Benson (Democrat) took to Twitter to point her comments squarely at the former president.
“This is not true,” she wrote. “Please do not spread lies to incite or promote political violence in our state. Or anywhere. Thank you.”
Pandora Pascal, elections director for Chatham County, North Carolina, said working with the county’s emergency response officer and additional security helped keep things going. calm Tuesday.
There have been active efforts to combat the false claims, she said. Election officials who have often felt under siege over the past two years. Of his 100 county election officials in North Carolina, he has resigned 45 in the past three years, state officials said.
“People are trying to break us,” said Pascal. But she added, “Election administrators at all levels are resilient people who will fight to the end to ensure that American democracy never dies.”
There have been several isolated reports of problems.
A man with a knife was arrested at a polling place in West Bend, Wisconsin, after demanding that voters “stop voting,” police said. Officials said the man knew the library was a polling place and knew the disruption would lead to a police response.They said they had not specified a political motive. said the man had been released on bail from previous arrests involving posting leaflets containing “threatening political and racial language.”
The incident halted voting at the precinct for about 30 minutes, officials said.
Maricopa County, Arizona, where more than 60% of Arizona’s voters live, could have had a more significant problem. About a quarter of the county’s 223 polling stations experienced difficulties with counters, county officials said. They said the fix to the problem brought many machines back online by the end of the day. During that time, voters were able to drop their ballots into secure bins. Officials said no voters were disenfranchised as a result of the glitch.
On Wednesday, Maricopa County Commissioner Bill Gates, a Republican, said county officials were baffled by problems caused by printers printing ballots with too thin ink. read by the vote counter. The printer was used without issue during the primary, he said.
The judge denied requests by Republican candidates and the National Party to extend voting time due to glitches. As more votes are counted and statewide elections tighten, the issue could become central to potential legal challenges.
Elsewhere, voices of the popular MAGA movement have flooded polling stations with activists and station monitors, despite promises to keep them within sight of ballot drop-boxes, novices of the aggressive fraud hunt. Election officials breathed a sigh of relief at what appeared to be very little.
In Milwaukee, an army of poll workers stationed at a giant conference room table methodically counted more than 60,000 absentee ballots as election observers, journalists and international observers from both parties watched. . At the end of the night, election administrator Claire Woodall-Vog and witnesses for each of the major political parties would go from ballot counter to ballot counter, flash the results, take out his drive and take it to the county clerk. I sealed the envelope to keep it safe.
A brief tense exchange began when Woodall-Vogg opened one tabulator panel, bumped the power cord, and inadvertently pulled it out. She wrote down what happened and logged the time.
“I recorded the machine being unplugged,” she announced.
“You are I pulled the plug,” the observer retorted.
However, the moment quickly passed as an observer and his colleague confirmed that the moment was captured on videotape.
In an interview Wednesday, Woodall-Vog said she couldn’t imagine how observers would have believed she or any candidate would benefit from unplugging the machine. “I think he’s just a living example of what we’re facing,” she said. “There’s really no winning solution.”
But overall, Election Day went smoothly. She said this was because she had enough training, including how to defuse conflict. “Employees never felt offended when they answered questions,” she said. “I didn’t care if people were taking pictures, just the more transparent the better.”
In New Mexico, Santa Fe County Clerk Catherine Clark has also noticed a growing interest in monitoring polls and challenges from both parties. Some of her challengers have become “a little fanatical,” she said.
“Just double check the rules,” she said, explaining how workers spread the problem.
Election officials consider pre-election rhetoric from figures like former Trump adviser and popular podcaster Stephen K. Bannon, who boasted a large new network of “election integrity” activists. said nationally that less partisan challengers had emerged than they thought. (“We’ll be there and we’ll enforce those rules. We’ll contest any vote on any vote. You’ve got to put up with it, right?” he said on his show’s recent said in the episode.)
County Clerk Nathan Savage of Republican-dominated Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, said there are about 50 pollsters spread across 74 constituencies, about twice as many as in 2020. In areas where election denialism was rampant, local groups struggled to find enough volunteers to monitor county drop-boxes.
“Sometimes, with tactics like this, the talk is a threat.” Watchdog group Common Cause. “It’s all about making the movement look bigger than it is… making the idea of fringe feel so mainstream and ubiquitous.”
Bannon said in a text message that he believes his strategy has worked. “I think people are fully deployed. I think that’s why the Pennsylvania and Michigan issues were identified and resolved,” he wrote. Having a poll watcher in Arizona helped speed up the issue of pollsters rejecting ballots, “it saved the day,” he said.
Michigan Senator Ed McBroom, a Republican who won re-election on Tuesday, said the election put the system right for some who were skeptical about 2020. McBroom wrote a legislative report in 2021 and concluded that mass fraud he did not characterize the 2020 Michigan election., Criticized by Trump and his allies.
“I think there were a lot of people who volunteered and wanted to be part of this after 2020,” he said. “They had to learn the rules and the process. I did not see it.”
But some of the leading voices in the election campaign suggest that the midterms are just getting started. Creta Mitchell, the attorney who advised Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election, said on Wednesday’s podcast that the group she runs will limit absentee voting and make voter roll removals easier. He said he would “take back American elections” by focusing on changing the law.
In North Carolina, Pascal said it was election officials who prevented partisan challengers from breaking the rules.
“We let them know that we don’t tolerate it,” she said.
Beth Reinhard, Matthew Brown, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Greg Jaffe, Elizabeth Miller, Sam Easter, Kim Bellware, Ashley Cusick, Matthew David LaPlante, Rodney Welch, Gheni Platenburg, and Alex Hinojosa contributed to this report. .
