CAMPAIGN 2024: Election Day is here, after tens of millions have already cast their ballots

Liza Fortt, 74, center, waits in line to cast her ballot for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at her polling place at Scranton High School in Scranton, Pa., on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Election Day voting was underway across much of the U.S. on Tuesday morning after tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots. Those early votes included record numbers in Georgia, North Carolina and other battleground states that could decide the winner.

The early turnout in Georgia, which has flipped between the Republican and Democratic nominees in the previous two presidential elections, has been so robust — over 4 million voters — that a top official in the secretary of state’s office said the big day could look like a “ghost town” at the polls.

As of Monday, Associated Press tracking of advance voting nationwide showed roughly 82 million ballots already cast — slightly more than half the total number of votes in the presidential election four years earlier. That’s driven partly by Republican voters, who were casting early ballots at a higher rate than in recent previous elections after a campaign by former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee to counter the Democrats’ longstanding advantage in the early vote.

Voters on Tuesday morning were streaming enthusiastically to the polls, even huddling under umbrellas in the rain as they lined up to cast their ballots in Houston and Omaha, Nebraska. Forecasters said voters in Colorado and Montana might see snow later in the day.

In the first hours of voting, some isolated reports emerged of hiccups common to every Election Day, including delays in getting e-pollbooks up and running in Louisville, Kentucky, and a power outage requiring the use of a generator at a polling location in St. Louis. In Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas in swing state Pennsylvania, two polling places faced delays opening when election judges did not arrive or showed up late. Allegheny County officials said one of the sites was up and running, and the other would be soon.

Despite long lines in some places and a few typical glitches, early in-person and mail voting also proceeded without any major problems.

That included in the parts of western North Carolina hammered last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, pulled off a herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their ballots as they dealt with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads.

By the time early voting in North Carolina had ended on Saturday, over 4.4 million voters — or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state — had cast their ballots. As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even stronger at 59% of registered voters, state election board Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said.

Brinson Bell called the voters and election workers in the hurricane-hit counties “an inspiration to us all.”

Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most worrisome disruptions to the election season so far were arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. Authorities there were searching for the person responsible.

In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mailed ballots to their local election office by the close of polls on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge rejected their lawsuit over the weekend.

This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began various attempts to circumvent the outcome and remain in power. That climaxed with the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to halt certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”

Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states that all affirmed Biden’s win. A survey last month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their ballots will be counted accurately this year.

Seeking to rebuild voter confidence in a system targeted with false claims of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have passed new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the window to apply or return a mail ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding ID requirements.

Through four years of election lies and voting-related conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has prompted high turnover and led to heightened security for election offices and polling sites that includes panic buttons and bullet-proof glass.

While there have been no major reports of any malicious cyberactivity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to drum up partisan vitriol and disinformation. In the final weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed to Russia multiple fake videos alleging election fraud in presidential swing states.

On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was ramping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and likely would continue those efforts well after the votes have been cast.

Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to rely on state and local election officials for information about elections.

“This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation being aggressively peddled and amplified by our foreign adversaries at a greater scale than ever before,” she said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”

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