Polls are open across the country, and where something went wrong on Tuesday morning, election officials fixed it or found another way for people to vote. Problems at a polling place do not cancel your vote: in Westchester County, New York, when scanners stopped taking ballots, ballots went into secure bags to be counted later.
If you are in line when the polls close, stay in line: you still get to vote. Polling hours and your polling place are in our midterms guide.
If anything stops you voting, call 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683). Your rights at the polls are in our midterms guide.
In Westchester County, the state board of elections traced the scanner fault to an update to the county’s election programming, and the county board said the ballots would stay secure and monitored. Results in Mike Lawler’s 17th district race could be delayed.
Broward County, Florida, fixed a fault in a new bar code feature within about 20 minutes of the polls opening. Joe Scott, the supervisor of elections, said nobody voted on the wrong ballot and urged anyone turned away to come back before the polls close at 7pm.
In Fulton County, Georgia, about 1,000 ballots will be rescanned after one scanner jammed and another lost power when a wheelchair rolled over its cable. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, said it would not delay results.
Flooding has moved polling places in three regions, and voters were told of the changes by text and email. Florida moved 21 polling places in eight counties, the Navajo Nation moved five in Arizona and New Mexico, and Colorado offered replacement ballots and new places to vote in the flooded southwest of the state.
The Justice Department is sending about 1,000 monitors into polling places, up from 289 in 2022 and 714 in 2024. A judge noted that they will be in plain clothes, unarmed and unable to make arrests. The department told a federal judge it had removed sworn officers who signed up as monitors, and Judge Reggie Walton warned there would be “hell to pay” if he had been misled.
In Toledo, Ohio, two sites, one of them a polling station at Beverley Elementary School, were evacuated after bomb threats and searched by the bomb squad.
On the eve of the vote, the Supreme Court refused to let the Trump administration set aside California mail ballots it said may have been cast by noncitizens. The one-sentence order had no noted dissents. It followed a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the federal government has no power to dictate to states how they run elections.
In September the court had already rejected the administration's bid to impose new Postal Service rules on mail ballots for these midterms.
Arlington County, Virginia, has sued to keep armed federal agents away from its polling places. Federal law bars troops or armed men at the polls. In Minnesota, Homeland Security agents have turned up at election sites three times this year to serve subpoenas, twice at an early voting site.
