Early voting begins in US midterm elections that could flip control of Congress

In-per­son vot­ing for this year’s midterm elec­tions be­gan Fri­day, ush­er­ing in the fi­nal six weeks for Amer­i­cans to de­cide which par­ty they trust to lead Con­gress through a cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, a pro­longed war in Iran and oth­er press­ing is­sues.

Elec­tion ad­min­is­tra­tors say they are pre­pared and con­fi­dent the vote will be ac­cu­rate and se­cure. Nev­er­the­less, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has con­tin­ued with ef­forts to den­i­grate cer­tain vot­ing meth­ods and re­shape how elec­tions are run, through court chal­lenges, an ex­pan­sive fed­er­al hunt for nonci­t­i­zen vot­ers and a pres­sure cam­paign to force elec­tion of­fi­cials to share sen­si­tive vot­er da­ta.

Fri­day marked the start of ear­ly vot­ing in Vir­ginia. Vot­ers in a hand­ful of oth­er states, in­clud­ing Ida­ho, Min­neso­ta and South Dako­ta, can cast ab­sen­tee bal­lots in per­son, typ­i­cal­ly at a lo­cal elec­tion of­fice or vot­ing cen­ter. More ex­pan­sive ear­ly vot­ing is sched­uled to be­gin in those and oth­er states in the com­ing weeks.

At a vot­ing lo­ca­tion in Fair­fax, Vir­ginia, 18-year-old col­lege stu­dent Sanya Sing­hal was among the first to vote ear­ly in per­son Fri­day morn­ing, ar­riv­ing well be­fore the site opened to get in line.

“Why not just have a lit­tle fun in life, you know, try to be the first ear­ly vot­er?” she said. “I re­al­ly want to par­tic­i­pate in my democ­ra­cy.”

At a vot­ing lo­ca­tion in sub­ur­ban Rich­mond, a poll work­er rang a bell as the build­ing opened and about a dozen vot­ers in line be­gan to file in. Stephen Gu­ra was ex­cit­ed to be the first.

“This elec­tion is crit­i­cal. We need to stop the Trump agen­da. We need to start elect­ing peo­ple who will stand up for peo­ple in this dis­trict,” said Gu­ra, who added that he vot­ed for U.S. Sen. Mark Warn­er, a De­mo­c­rat, and Shan­non Tay­lor, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee against Re­pub­li­can in­cum­bent Rob Wittman in the 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict.

The Nov. 3 elec­tion in­cludes votes for gov­er­nor and state leg­is­la­ture in most states and will de­ter­mine whether Re­pub­li­cans main­tain con­trol of the U.S. House and Sen­ate. If De­moc­rats re­take Con­gress, it will al­ter the tra­jec­to­ry of the fi­nal two years of Trump’s term, most like­ly lead­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tions and oth­er over­sight ef­forts.

Vot­ing un­der­way af­ter un­usu­al re­dis­trict­ing and Trump’s bid to con­trol how elec­tions are run

At the sub­ur­ban Rich­mond vot­ing cen­ter, a steady stream of vot­ers flowed in and out for the first hour of ear­ly vot­ing. William Cur­ry, a 74-year-old re­tiree who de­scribed him­self as a lib­er­tar­i­an-lean­ing in­de­pen­dent con­ser­v­a­tive, vot­ed for Warn­er’s Re­pub­li­can chal­lenger, Bert Mizu­sawa, and Wittman. Cur­ry said he gen­er­al­ly ap­proves of the job Trump has done, apart from the war with Iran.

“He’s in a mess he can’t get rid of,” Cur­ry said of the con­flict.

On a rainy day in Sioux Falls, South Dako­ta, Bill Goehring, 67, said he vot­ed ear­ly at the coun­ty of­fice be­cause he will be trav­el­ing lat­er. He vot­ed for a mix of De­moc­rats and in­de­pen­dents, and said Trump’s “dic­ta­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies are bad for Amer­i­ca.”

The start of ear­ly vot­ing comes at a time of deep angst among many Amer­i­cans about is­sues in­clud­ing ris­ing gas and gro­cery prices, the war in Iran, the loom­ing risks of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and Trump’s ag­gres­sive im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment cam­paign.

It al­so fol­lows an un­prece­dent­ed spate of mid-decade re­dis­trict­ing for the U.S. House that be­gan when Trump urged the Re­pub­li­can-con­trolled leg­is­la­ture in Texas to re­draw its con­gres­sion­al map to help the par­ty. Cal­i­for­nia and oth­er states fol­lowed.

The changes af­fect mil­lions of peo­ple: Re­search shows 1 in 10 Amer­i­cans this fall is a res­i­dent of a dif­fer­ent con­gres­sion­al dis­trict than in 2024.

Those par­ti­san ef­forts are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue be­fore the 2028 elec­tions af­ter a land­mark rul­ing this year from the U.S. Supreme Court weak­ened the fed­er­al Vot­ing Rights Act’s pro­tec­tions against racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry re­dis­trict­ing.

As the start of ear­ly vot­ing ap­proached, Trump was fo­cused on ef­forts to as­sert fed­er­al con­trol over elec­tion ad­min­is­tra­tion, even as the Con­sti­tu­tion be­stows the pow­er to run elec­tions on the states and, in some cas­es, Con­gress. The na­tion’s high­est court re­ject­ed Trump’s bid to re­strict mail bal­lots this week, but sev­er­al of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s oth­er ef­forts to in­flu­ence the vot­ing process and mine state vot­er lists for il­le­git­i­mate vot­ers con­tin­ue.

Vir­ginia’s at­tor­ney gen­er­al said Thurs­day that Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion may have vi­o­lat­ed sev­er­al of the state’s laws af­ter a whistle­blow­er ac­cused fed­er­al em­ploy­ees of mis­rep­re­sent­ing them­selves on vot­er lookup tools to hunt for nonci­t­i­zen vot­ers. In a let­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Jay Jones de­mand­ed that the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty con­firm in writ­ing whether it had di­rect­ed any­one to ac­cess Vir­ginia vot­ers’ in­for­ma­tion with­out first ob­tain­ing per­mis­sion from those vot­ers.

Trump for years has raised the specter of wide­spread nonci­t­i­zen vot­ing in U.S. elec­tions, and this year is no ex­cep­tion. But de­spite his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s in­sis­tence that hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple are il­le­gal­ly on vot­ing rolls across the coun­try, re­search con­tin­ues to show nonci­t­i­zen vot­ing is ex­cep­tion­al­ly rare.

David Beck­er, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and founder of the Cen­ter for Elec­tion In­no­va­tion and Re­search, said he wouldn’t be sur­prised if the Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent con­tin­ues “his dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign and his at­tack on elec­tion of­fi­cials.” But he said he thinks de­spite that and oth­er chal­lenges, “ul­ti­mate­ly the process will hold as it has in past years.”

Ad­vo­cates sug­gest vot­ers cast their bal­lots ear­ly

Vot­ing rights ad­vo­cates have en­cour­aged vot­ers this year to cast mail bal­lots ear­ly, in part be­cause of con­cerns about re­cent changes in U.S. Postal Ser­vice op­er­a­tions that could de­lay the ap­pli­ca­tion of post­marks to bal­lots.

“Vot­ing ear­ly, whether in per­son or by mail, is good for all of our com­mu­ni­ties be­cause it gives vot­ers op­tions, eas­es lines on Elec­tion Day and can even mean faster re­sults,” said Han­nah Fried, co-founder and CEO of the vot­ing rights group All Vot­ing Is Lo­cal.

The top of­fi­cial at the U.S. Postal Ser­vice al­so en­cour­aged vot­ers who cast bal­lots by mail to get them in ear­ly.

“We say sev­en days,” post­mas­ter gen­er­al David Stein­er said in an in­ter­view. “Every­thing is solved if peo­ple vote ear­ly.”

In a news brief­ing Thurs­day, Min­neso­ta Sec­re­tary of State Steve Si­mon urged peo­ple not to be swayed by sto­ries they might have seen or read that cast doubt on elec­tion op­er­a­tions. They would be able to vote “just like they al­ways have,” he said.

“I just want to reaf­firm that Min­neso­ta’s elec­tions are fun­da­men­tal­ly free, fair, ac­cu­rate, hon­est and se­cure,” he said. —HEN­RI­CO, Va. (AP)

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Sto­ry by ALI SWEN­SON, SARAH RANKIN and SARAH RAZA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Ali Swen­son re­port­ed from New York and Sarah Raza from Sioux Falls, S.D. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Mike Catal­i­ni in Philadel­phia and AP video jour­nal­ist Nathan Ell­gren in Fair­fax, Va., con­tributed to this re­port.