Early voting advances as Trump administration pressures state elections

Supreme Court rejects California ballot challenge as courts block federal election moves

Millions of Americans have already cast ballots in the 2026 midterms, and final voting begins Tuesday with early turnout on pace to eclipse the last midterm election two years ago, according to the Associated Press. Voting so far has unfolded with relatively few problems, in contrast to President Donald Trump’s continued rhetoric about election cheating. On Monday night, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the administration’s push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots as part of its search for noncitizen voters.

The election will determine whether Republicans keep control of Congress. The Associated Press described the backdrop for the final day of voting as one of uncertainty, following a year in which President Donald Trump had sought to influence how states run their elections and raised doubts about the outcome should Republicans lose.

Election Day operations and voter access

First polling sites were scheduled to open at 6 a.m. Tuesday in Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.

Heavy rains and flash flooding across a swath of the Southwest over the weekend were expected to make it harder for some voters to reach polling places in parts of Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Most polling-place locations had not changed, though more modifications could be announced as officials assessed the situation.

Election administrators and voting-rights advocates advised voters casting late absentee ballots to use drop boxes or deliver them to polling places in person rather than mail them. The advice came after concerns emerged that recent changes in United States Postal Service operations could result in postmarking delays that would mean mail ballots could not be counted. Late-arriving ballots or late postmarks disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in California, Oregon and Washington, which mail ballots to all voters, during this year’s primaries.

Federal court fights, election monitors and the Alaska certification case

President Donald Trump spent months trying to use presidential power to influence this year’s elections. His Justice and Homeland Security departments conducted a large-scale operation to identify noncitizen voters, including a predawn operation that led to more than two dozen arrests in California.

The Justice Department was planning its largest-ever effort to monitor Election Day polling places, while Democrats and allied groups were organizing an even larger effort. At Trump’s urging, the administration had sued to block certification of Alaska’s results if the outcome of the Senate race favored Democrats.

The Associated Press described the administration’s efforts to influence state-run elections as the most significant disruptions expected before Election Day. Voting-rights groups, Democrats and the Justice Department have been exchanging a flurry of legal filings over alleged noncitizen voters, federal election monitors, federal intimidation of election officials and other concerns. The Associated Press said those filings reveal how efforts to expand federal control over state-run elections, combined with high-stakes races, are resulting in court battles that could extend beyond Election Day into ballot counting and certification of the results.

In the run-up to Tuesday, the measures Democratic groups had anticipated had not materialized, and the administration’s legal maneuvers had been largely blocked by the courts. One of the administration’s most high-profile election-law efforts ended Monday night when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected its push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots as part of its search for noncitizen voters.

Less than two months earlier, the court had rejected another Trump attempt to limit mail voting through changes at the Postal Service. That directive was included in one of two executive orders Trump signed during his second term that attempted to federalize certain aspects of elections, even though the Constitution gives the states, and sometimes Congress, the authority to set election rules.

Election law experts told the Associated Press that Trump’s lawsuits went beyond historic norms, but said the administration’s legal arguments were unlikely to convince the courts.

Voter-fraud claims, rare noncitizen voting and Trump’s qualified acceptance

The Associated Press characterized President Donald Trump’s constant claims about widespread voter fraud as false. Those claims led election officials and Democratic groups across the country to plan for the possibility of immigration agents at voting sites or federal officers seizing voting machines. The administration insisted that no armed federal officials would guard the polls on Election Day.

The Associated Press said even the administration’s own record of arrests and charges demonstrated what research and state investigations had made clear for years: instances of noncitizens casting ballots are extremely rare.

The Associated Press reported that Trump had ramped up his own personal equivocations about whether the election would be legitimate, as he had in the past. A week before Election Day, when a reporter asked whether he would accept the results, he offered a qualified answer. “I will if they are honest,” he said.

Byline note: Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, contributed to the report.