Comment As voters cast their ballots largely without incident Tuesday afternoon, former President Donald Trump took to social media to declare that a small, already-fixed problem with absentee voting in Detroit was “REALLY BAD.” “Protest, protest, protest,” he wrote shortly before 2:30 p.m Unlike in 2020, when similar chants by the then-president drew thousands of supporters to the streets — including putting up signs in Detroit and later at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 — this time, no one showed up. After two years of promises by Trump and his supporters to flood the polls and counting stations with party observers to detect alleged fraud, after unprecedented threats against election workers, after calls to abandon machines in favor of counting hands and after postings in online chat groups called for violent action to stop the alleged fraud, a peaceful election day drew high turnout and only scattered reports of trouble. Election officials said they believed the relative regularity resulted from a combination of a concerted effort on the part of well-prepared poll workers and voters, as well as the fact that some of Trump’s strongest supporters were less strong than they had claimed. . The basic dynamics of midterm elections — which always draw less passion than presidential contests and in which voters do not rally around a single candidate — also played a role. Then there was the Trump factor. The 45th The president no longer held the White House megaphone, or even Twitter, to deliver his message to his supporters in real time. And the election results show the number of people who are inclined to respond to Trump’s exhortations has continued to fall since losing the 2020 election. “Our democracy is more resilient than people give it credit for,” said Adam Witt, a Harrison, Michigan city clerk and president of the state municipal employees union. Wit said election officials helped combat suspicion in the community by opening their doors before Election Day to explain how the ballot counting system works, using social media to educate voters and hold information sessions of the public. “The officials did a lot to restore trust,” he said. Officials have also reacted much more quickly than in 2020 to misinformation, using social media to defuse unfounded accusations and rumors before they ignite fires. Within an hour of Trump’s post about the alleged absentee ballot problem, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) responded on Twitter, addressing her comment directly to the former president. “This is not true,” he wrote. “Please do not spread lies to incite or encourage political violence in our state. Or anywhere. Thanks.” A potential GOP presidential nominee triumphed on Election Day. It wasn’t Donald Trump. Pandora Paschal, director of elections for Chatham County, NC, said working with the county’s emergency operations manager and additional security helped keep things afloat calm on Tuesday. There was an aggressive effort to address false claims, he said electoral administrators who have often felt under siege over the past two years. Of North Carolina’s 100 county election officials, 45 have left in the past three years, state officials said, amid a barrage of threats, personal attacks and misinformation from election naysayers. “People are trying to break us,” Paschal said. But, he added, “election managers at every level are resilient people who will fight to the end to ensure that democracy in America never dies.” There were some isolated reports of problems. A man armed with a knife was arrested at a polling station in West Bend, Washington, after he asked them to “stop voting,” police said. Officials said the man indicated he knew the library was a voting location and that a disturbance would trigger a police response. They said they had not identified a political motive, but said the man was out on bail from a previous arrest related to posting leaflets containing “threatening political and racial language”. The incident disrupted voting in the district – for about half an hour, officials said. A potentially more significant problem emerged early in Maricopa County, Ariz., where more than 60 percent of the state’s voters live. Classifiers in about a quarter of the county’s 223 voters ran into difficulties, county officials said. They said a fix for the problem brought many machines back online by the end of the day. In the meantime, voters could drop ballots into secure bins. No voters were disenfranchised as a result of the error, officials said. On Wednesday, Maricopa County Board Chairman Bill Gates (R) said county officials were baffled by the problems, which stemmed from printers producing ballots with too light ink to be read by vote counting machines. The printers were used without problems during the qualifiers, he said. A judge rejected a request by Republican candidates and the national party to extend voting hours because of the error. The problems could become central to potential legal challenges as more ballots are counted and statewide races tighten. See how long it will take for some of the by-elections to be called Elsewhere, election officials breathed a sigh of relief that aggressive fraud-hunting upstarts seemed few and far between, despite promises from grassroots voices in the MAGA movement to flood polling centers with activists and poll watchers in sight of the polls. In Milwaukee, an army of poll workers stationed at tables in a giant conference room methodically counted more than 60,000 absentee ballots as election observers from both parties, journalists and international observers watched. At the end of the night, director of elections Claire Woodall-Vogg and witnesses from each major party went from polling station to polling station to remove flash drives with results and seal them in envelopes to take to the county clerk. A brief, tense exchange erupted when Woodall-Vogg opened a panel on a table, knocking on the power cord and accidentally unplugging it. Write down what happened and note the time. “I have documented that the machine was unplugged,” he announced. “You unplugged it,” one observer responded. But the moment passed quickly as the spotter and his colleagues made sure the moment was caught on videotape. In an interview Wednesday, Woodall-Vogg said she couldn’t imagine how the observer thought she or a candidate could benefit from disconnecting the machine. “I think it was just a living example of what we’re dealing with,” he said. “There really is no winning solution.” But overall, he said, election day went smoothly, which he attributed to plenty of training, including how to de-escalate conflicts. “Employees were not offended when answering questions,” he said. “I didn’t care if people took pictures of things. Simply put, the more transparent the better.” In New Mexico, Santa Fe County Clerk Kathryn Clark also saw increased interest in polling or contesting from both parties. Some challengers got “a little excited,” he said. “We’re just going over the rules again,” he said, explaining how workers stopped the problems. Election officials nationally said fewer party challengers showed up than they thought possible, given campaign rhetoric from figures such as former Trump adviser and popular podcaster Stephen K. Bannon, who boasted of a vast new network of “election integrity” activists. ». (“We’re going to be there and enforce those rules and challenge any vote, any vote, and you’re going to have to live with it, OK?” he said on a recent episode of his show. ) Nathan Savidge, county clerk in Republican-dominated Northumberland County, Pa., said there were about 50 poll watchers spread across 74 precincts, roughly double the number from 2020. In Ottawa County, Mich., a heavily Republican county west of Grand Rapids where suffrage was rampant, a local group struggled to find enough volunteers to monitor the county’s takeoff fields. “Sometimes, with tactics like this, the story is bullying,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of government operations for the watchdog group Common Cause. “It’s about making a movement look bigger than it is … making a fringe idea look very mainstream and like it’s everywhere.” Meet the candidates who made history in midterms In a text message, Bannon said he believes his strategy has been successful. “I think the people were fully developed and I think that’s why trouble was found in Pennsylvania and Michigan and put to bed,” he wrote. The deployment of poll watchers in Arizona, he said, “saved the day” by ensuring a quick response to issues with the sorters rejecting ballots. Michigan state Sen. Ed McBroom (R), who won re-election Tuesday, said the election validated the system for some who were skeptical of it in 2020, in part because some of those skeptics participated in the process this year . McBroom wrote a legislative report in 2021 that concluded massive fraud had not characterized Michigan’s 2020 election, and criticized by Trump and his allies. “I think we had a lot of those people who wanted to volunteer and be a part of this beyond 2020,” he said. “They had to learn the rules, the procedures. They took time. They got the training. And in the end they didn’t see things that concerned them on election day to a great extent.” However, some leading voices in the election-denying movement have suggested that their efforts around the midterms are just getting started. Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who advised Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election, said in a podcast Wednesday that a group she runs will “reclaim America’s elections” by focusing on changing laws to limit absentee voting and facility…
