By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY and ALI SWENSON, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Election Day 2024 arrived Tuesday — with tens of millions of Americans already voting. These include record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.
Early turnout in Georgia, which has swung between Republican and Democratic candidates in the previous two presidential elections, has been so strong — more than 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said said the big day could resemble a “ghost town” at the polls.
As of Monday, tracking of nationwide early voting by the Associated Press showed that about 82 million ballots had already been cast, or just over half of the total votes cast in presidential election four years earlier. This is due in part to Republican voters, who voted early at a higher rate than in recent elections, after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the long-standing advantage Democrats in early voting.
Despite long lines at some locations and some hiccups common to all elections, in-person and mail-in early voting went without major problems.
That includes areas 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 herculean efforts to ensure residents could vote as they faced power outages, water shortages and flooded roads.
By the end of early voting in North Carolina on Saturday, more than 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast ballots. On Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties hit by the hurricane was even stronger, with 59% of voters registered, said state election board executive director Karen Brinson Bell.
Brinson Bell called voters and election workers in hurricane-affected counties “an inspiration to all of us.”
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Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrying disruptions of the election season so far have been arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities were searching for the person responsible.
The lack of significant and widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the RNC, now under his sway, from making numerous allegations of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, prelude possible for protests after the elections. Day.
He misrepresented an ongoing investigation in Pennsylvania into approximately 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications by claiming that one of the counties was “caught in possession of 2,600 fake ballots and forms, all written by the same person “. The investigation concerns registration requests; nothing indicates that these are ballots.
In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mailed ballots to their local election office before the close of polls on Election Day, votes allowed under state law. A judge dismissed their complaint this weekend.
Trump and Republicans have also warned of the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of non-citizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that flies in the face of data, including from secretaries of the State Republicans. Research has consistently shown that non-citizens registering to vote are rare. Any non-citizen who does so faces criminal charges and deportation, which is a significant deterrent.
A case of non-citizen voting was detected during early voting last month and resulted in criminal charges in Michigan after a Chinese student voted illegally early.
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 January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”
Even today, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in battleground states that have all confirmed Biden’s victory . A survey last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that Republicans remain far more skeptical than Democrats about the accuracy of their ballot counts this year.
Seeking to restore voter confidence in a system targeted by false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states have adopted new voting restrictions since 2020. These rules include shortening the time to apply for or return an absentee ballot, reducing the availability of ballot boxes and adding identification requirements.
On the final weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim the election was rigged against him and said the winner of the presidential election should be declared on election night, before all the ballots were cast. are not 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 intended to suggest to people “that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.” Instead, she urged people who had already voted to encourage their friends to do the same.
During four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials faced harassment and even death threats. This caused high turnover and led to increased security at election offices and voting sites, including panic buttons and bulletproof glass.
Although there have been no reports of malicious cyber activity affecting election offices, foreign actors have actively used fake social media profiles and websites to stoke partisan vitriol and misinformation. In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence agencies 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, warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that incite violence, and would continue probably these efforts well after the votes. .
Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for election information.
“This is particularly important as we find ourselves in an election cycle marked by an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries on a scale greater than ever before,” he said. she declared. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to vote in our democracy. »
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