Voters sail through mostly smooth Election Day, despite federal interference fears

America voted.

After the Trump administration pressured election officials, after concerns that armed federal agents would deploy to the polls, after fears U.S. Department of Justice election monitors would intimidate voters — ballots were cast by the millions Tuesday, mostly without incident.

Across the United States, voters headed to their polling places. At churches, schools and community centers, they rendered their verdict on the direction of the country and those who lead it.

As the votes are counted, what comes next is uncertain.

President Donald Trump has long put forward false allegations of election fraud and baseless conspiracy theories to undermine results he doesn’t like. 

Democrats appeared well on their way to retaking control of Congress as votes were counted Tuesday night, ushering in a new era of divided government in Washington, D.C.

Trump didn’t immediately allege fraud as the scale of GOP losses began to come into focus. On social media late Tuesday, Trump wrote that if he had been on the ballot, “we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

Days or weeks of courtroom battles could lie ahead if Trump deploys the machinery of the federal government to advance claims of a stolen election. His 2020 election loss set off a host of unsuccessful lawsuits that tried to overturn election results in battleground states, part of a campaign that culminated in a mob of his supporters storming the Capitol.

But on Tuesday, American democracy passed a crucial test — voters voted.

“What we’re seeing today could have looked a lot different,” Andrew Walchuk, policy director and counsel for the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause, told reporters. “We could have seen a lot of different scenarios based on what the administration wanted to get away with.”

Over the past year, the Trump administration filed dozens of election-related lawsuits on everything from voter rolls to ballot counting. Federal courts halted nearly all of these efforts, including a demand that California set aside the ballots of 20,000 people the Trump administration alleged were suspected noncitizens.

Trump and his allies have said they’re focused on preventing noncitizen voting, which they say cancels out the votes of U.S. citizens. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has arrested dozens of alleged noncitizen voters in recent weeks, and the president continues to call on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship.

“We are going to continue our yearslong fight on Election Integrity,” Trump wrote in a Saturday social media post.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued multiple warnings against illegal voting on Tuesday. On social media he wrote that if ineligible voters cast a ballot, DHS “will find you, hunt you down, and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

In the states

Whatever happens next, on Tuesday states administered elections under their own rules as laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jolyne Marshall, who said her top priority was “stopping the descent into fascism,” said she had heard talk about the potential for voter suppression, such as federal agents at polling places. On Tuesday, she said she had a seamless voting experience.

The Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller spent Election Day as a poll chaplain in Raleigh, North Carolina, for Faith United to Save Democracy, a nonpartisan, multi-faith group. She said she had been told to anticipate some type of federal presence in the area.

“I didn’t know what to expect today, which is just always a little unnerving,” Parker Miller said. “But I’ve done this in the past and what I came in expecting today was to also have a very peaceful and fair and free election.”

The Justice Department deployed about 1,000 election monitors across the country and in addition to DOJ personnel, drew upon federal law enforcement agents typically not assigned to the polls. The makeup of the monitors raised concerns among Democrats and voting rights leaders that they could be used to intimidate voters.

The Michigan Department of Attorney General said it was following up on reports that monitors in Flint had improperly asked poll workers about the details of their training and in Dearborn had asked for copies of training materials. State officials said they had contacted the Justice Department’s election monitor coordinator for Michigan about the activity.

“That coordinator confirmed that this activity that the monitors were engaging in is not consistent with how the monitors were trained,” Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, told reporters.

Leaders with the League of Women Voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania said during a news conference that monitors in their states were wearing plain clothes and staying out of the way.

“They’re really just asking short questions of voters when they come out, sometimes,” Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, told reporters.

Usual election problems

Across the country, election officials said the challenges they encountered on Tuesday centered on typical problems — the weather, power outages and technical issues — and not federal interference.

The most significant problem appeared in Westchester County, New York, where voting machines were unable to accept paper ballots. The New York State Board of Elections said in a statement that an update to the county’s election programming caused the issue.

Election officials emphasized that voting continued and that ballots were being kept in secure bags, though the problem could affect the speed of results. The area includes the district of Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who faces Democrat Cait Conley in a closely watched toss-up race.

Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins, a Democrat, said in a statement that the county had fallen short of the standard of providing a fair, secure and seamless election process. He promised to convene a bipartisan team to review the decisions and failures that led to “this debacle.”

“The voters deserve better, and I intend to make sure they get it,” Jenkins said.

Lawsuit after lawsuit

Despite isolated problems, the relative smoothness of voting across the country stood in stark contrast to the frenetic pace of legal challenges that played out in the months, days and hours before Tuesday.

As Election Day approached, the Justice Department sued Alaska and California. In Alaska, the Trump administration sought to preemptively pause certification of the U.S. Senate election, an effort a federal judge quickly dismissed.

In California, Justice Department lawyers raised the possibility that election officials could face prosecution if they tabulated the ballots of noncitizens. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from issuing threats, but that order was halted Tuesday by an en banc panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — a rare election-related legal victory for the president.

“The rule of law prevails. Separation of powers does not allow judges to take control of core executive branch powers. We will conduct our criminal investigations without fear or favor,” Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, wrote on social media.

The Justice Department alleged in a lawsuit that Homeland Security had identified 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters registered in the state. It demanded California set aside the ballots of anyone on the list. State and local election officials raised concerns about the accuracy of the list and said the demand encroached on their authority over elections.

A district court judge and an appeals court both rejected the demand. And on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s request in a one-sentence order that election legal experts said spoke volumes. 

In a statement, the Justice Department said it was disappointed in the decision but that the court loss wasn’t the end of its efforts. In addition to deploying monitors and charging noncitizen voters, the department said it would “pursue other legal avenues to ensure that only eligible American citizens vote.” 

David Becker, a former Justice Department Voting Section attorney who leads the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, on a press call noted that the Supreme Court had issued its order without any dissents or explanation.

“Just a complete smackdown,” Becker said, adding that the justices were sending a message that “they’re not going to credit any future efforts to impose federal fiat on the states as they manage their elections.”

Joshua Bowling of Source New Mexico, Clayton Henkel of NC Newsline and Jon King of Michigan Advance contributed reporting.