With 239.5 million estimated eligible voters, that’s around 117 million expected to vote – with as many as 74 million of them set to hit polling places in person Tuesday.
“That’s still a fairly healthy turnout rate for modern midterm elections,” McDonald said in an analysis. “Aside from 2018 –which had the highest midterm turnout rate since 1914 –the last time we experienced midterm turnout rates in the mid-40 percent range was the 1960s.”
As America braces for its first national election since 2020 – as Jan. 6 insurrectionists remain on trial, as candidates nationwide deny the results from presidential election, as the president warns of a “path to chaos” – experts on voting and extremism want to make two things clear.
First, voting in the United States remains extraordinarily safe.
Second, as millions of Americans still seethe over the 2020 election and cast doubt on the fairness of the electoral process, spurred on by lies and disinformation, the possibility remains of tense confrontations or even violence at polling places.
It’s a new normal for everyone – election officials, law enforcement officers and individual voters – who should be on alert, but not panicked, as they cast their votes, said Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and an expert on domestic extremism.
“When it comes to risks at the polls, I keep telling people to be vigilant, but not paranoid,” Holt said. ”Vigilance means being aware of some of the different things that you might see at polling locations and how to respond to those, whereas paranoia looks like believing armed goons are waiting outside your polling station now and maybe you just don't want to go vote at all, because you're worried about it.”
— Will Carless, Bill Keveney, and Trevor Hughes
Fetterman sues to have thousands of mail-in ballots counted
PHILADELPHIA – As all eyes are on pivotal Pennsylvania, where the U.S. Senate race here could decide which party controls the upper chamber, Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman is suing in federal court to ensure mail-in ballots with incorrect or missing dates will be counted.
His campaign is joined in the lawsuit by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Their filing late Monday comes after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 last week on a decision that ordered counties to set aside and not count mailed ballots with missing or invalid dates on their outer envelopes.
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