Midterm elections appear to run smoothly as parties' legal armies, DOJ monitors see little action

Tuesday’s midterm elections largely proceeded with few major delays, technical difficulties or legal challenges by both major parties–a sharp break from recent years when allegations of election fraud and the poor performance of election systems have dominated headlines.

The relative calm came despite an unprecedented buildup on all sides. The Justice Department sent roughly 1,000 election monitors to all 50 states for the first time, while the Republican and Democratic national committees each deployed thousands of poll watchers and lawyers in anticipation of Election Day disputes.

Just the News previously reported that the RNC deployed “election integrity deputy state directors” in 22 highly contested states, including Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina, alongside 22,000 poll workers. The party said in May it was involved in more than 130 election integrity cases across 30 states, and it urged supporters to report suspected fraud through its protectthevote.com website.

Party machines faced their first test

Democrats, motivated in part by concerns that President Donald Trump would use federal power to interfere, launched the DNC’s first in-house litigation department in August. Democratic state parties also formed the New Battlefield Project with a goal of recruiting 10,000 poll watchers.

Those party machines faced their first test early Tuesday in Westchester County, New York, home to a competitive congressional district, where ballot scanners stopped accepting ballots countywide. Rather than square off, both parties in the county joined together, “seeking a joint court order to require central tabulation of ballots at the County Board of Elections” to “ensure maximum transparency and accountability,” the RNC’s Election Integrity unit posted to social media.

The New York State Board of Elections later blamed a programming update made after the equipment had been tested, and said the affected ballots would be counted Tuesday night.

The most notable friction came in Michigan, where state officials said DOJ monitors overstepped at polling places in Dearborn and Flint. According to Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, monitors pressed poll workers about their training and, in Dearborn, asked for the training materials themselves. Michigan law lets federal monitors observe the process but not question election workers or handle election materials.

The Justice Department’s Michigan coordinator acknowledged the monitors had strayed from their instructions.

No “major concerns for now," Nessel's office says

"That coordinator confirmed that this activity that the monitors were engaging in is not consistent with how the monitors were trained, and that they would follow up with the monitors on the ground in Dearborn to remind them of what they are not permitted to do and what they are permitted to do,” Michigan Department of State spokeswoman Angela Benander said.

Nessel spokeswoman Kim Bush told The Detroit News the office had no “major concerns” for now. The department sent 71 monitors to seven Michigan cities, and state officials said voting was otherwise going smoothly by the afternoon.

Elsewhere, technical problems were brief and handled by extending hours. North Carolina’s State Board of Elections voted to extend voting at five precincts in four counties after stoppages, pushing back statewide results by 45 minutes. In Pennsylvania, a Chester County court gave three precincts an extra 30 minutes after machine setup delays, with late votes cast provisionally.

In Georgia’s Fulton County, officials planned a public rescan of 1,069 early ballots from two failed scanners, out of more than 328,000 cast. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the rescan would not delay results.

At the time of this writing, polls had not closed in California or Alaska.