Voting & Elections

"What we are seeing are things that we usually see on Election Day," Susannah Goodman, director of election security for Common Cause, told reporters. "There are glitches in the system, but election administrators have learned from the past and they have resiliency built in." ... And then there were issues that voting rights groups described as "weird."   A priest in Toledo was unexpectedly checking the identification of voters, said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause of Ohio. In Summit County, home to Akron, a man was seen observing polling places before being asked to move along. Katya Ehresman, an organizer for Common Cause of Texas, said there were a handful of incidents of alleged voter intimidation within 100 feet of polling locations, but the problem wasn't widespread. She said there was "overwhelming enthusiasm" for voting statewide. "I'm really excited about the turnout we are seeing," Ehresman said.

But Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, said late Tuesday that monitors were relieved by how quiet the day had been. “I am happy to report that today has been relatively quiet on the political violence front,” she told reporters late Tuesday. “We were absolutely prepared for more significant incidents, but they simply have not come to fruition.”

Susannah Goodman, director of election security for the government watchdog group Common Cause, says some polling sites are seeing their lines of voters grow because of issues with voting machines, including ballot scanners that need fixing. ... But Goodman stresses there are no major concerns so far. "These are things we see in every election cycle. There are glitches in the system. But election administrators have learned from the past and they have resiliency built in."

“What we are seeing are things that we usually see on Election Day,” said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause. “Sometimes voters are going in and one of the voting machines isn’t working, or lines are a little longer.”

Researchers tracking misinformation ahead of the midterms notified Twitter on Friday about three posts from well-known far-right figures that advanced debunked claims about election fraud. The posts remain up three days later. When Common Cause asked Twitter for an update on Monday, the platform said the posts were “under review.” Before Musk took over, Twitter responded much more quickly, said Jesse Littlewood, vice president for campaigns at Common Cause. The group said they had been in regular contact with Twitter staff before Musk took over. Now, they are getting a response from a generic email address. “We had been getting much faster decisions from them, sometimes within hours,” said Littlewood. Now, he said, “It’s like pushing the button for the walk sign at the stop light, and nothing is happening.”

“They’re looking for every advantage they can get, and they’ve calculated that this is a way that they can win more seats,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy organization. “Research has shown that absentee ballots are more likely to be discarded if they are voted by young people and people of color, which are not generally seen as the Republican base.”  Albert said legal battles over mail ballot eligibility have the potential to delay results and even change outcomes. In some cases, the disputes could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.