November 3, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — The final day of voting in this year’s midterm elections arrived Tuesday after months of legal disputes over President Donald Trump’s efforts to expand the federal government’s role in elections traditionally administered by the states.
Millions of Americans have already cast their ballots, with early voting turnout on pace to eclipse that of the last midterm elections. Voting so far has unfolded with relatively few problems.
Trump has spent months using executive authority and the courts to pursue changes in election administration ahead of elections that will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress.
The Justice and Homeland Security departments have conducted a broad effort to identify voters who are not U.S. citizens, including a predawn operation that led to more than two dozen arrests in California. The Department of Justice was planning its largest-ever effort to monitor Election Day polling places, while Democrats and allied groups were organizing an even larger monitoring effort.
At the president’s urging, the administration also sued in Alaska over allegations that a second Senate candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan had entered the race to confuse voters and draw votes from Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan. The Justice Department sought to delay certification if votes cast for the lesser-known Sullivan could have changed the outcome of the race. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, and the department appealed.
Trump has continued to make claims about widespread voter fraud. Election officials and Democratic groups across the country prepared for the possibility of immigration agents appearing at voting sites or federal officers attempting to seize voting machines. The administration has said no armed federal officials would be guarding polling places on Election Day.
In the run-up to Tuesday, several Trump administration election initiatives had been blocked or limited by federal courts, while actions that Democrats and voting rights groups had warned about had not occurred.
On Monday night, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an administration request that California set aside thousands of ballots while federal officials sought to determine whether noncitizens had voted. In another ruling Monday night, a federal judge ordered the administration to stop sending election officials lists of people it alleged were noncitizens.
Research, state investigations, and the administration’s own arrests and prosecutions have found that instances of noncitizens casting ballots are extremely rare.
Monday’s rulings followed another Supreme Court decision less than two months earlier rejecting a Trump administration effort to limit mail balloting through changes at the U.S. Postal Service.
That directive was included in one of two executive orders Trump signed during his second term seeking to increase federal involvement in certain aspects of election administration. The Constitution gives states primary responsibility for setting election rules, with Congress also having authority in some areas.
The first polling sites opened at 6 a.m. EST Tuesday in a handful of states — Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia.
Heavy rains and flash flooding across parts of the Southwest were expected to make it more difficult for some voters to reach polling places in Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
Election administrators in the Navajo Nation announced changes to several polling locations, and in rural San Juan County, Utah, voters were being allowed to vote electronically Tuesday because some may not be able to reach polling places.
Election administrators and voting rights advocates have advised voters casting late absentee ballots to use drop boxes or deliver them to polling places in person rather than mail them.
The advice followed concerns that changes in U.S. Postal Service operations could result in postmarking delays that would prevent some mail ballots from being counted. During this year’s primaries, tens of thousands of ballots in California, Oregon, and Washington were not counted because they arrived late or did not receive qualifying postmarks.
Legal disputes over noncitizen voters, federal election monitors, the authority of federal agencies, and state control of elections have produced a series of court cases that could continue into ballot counting and certification.
Voting rights groups, Democrats, and the Justice Department have exchanged legal filings over alleged noncitizen voters, federal election monitoring, concerns about intimidation of election officials, and the limits of federal authority over state-run elections.
Election law experts said some of the administration’s lawsuits go beyond customary federal involvement in election administration and expressed doubt that several of its legal arguments would succeed in court.
Trump also has declined to give an unconditional commitment that he would accept the election results.
A week before Election Day, a reporter asked him whether he would accept the outcome.
“I will if they are honest,” Trump said.
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