California braces for high election turnout, voter confusion

Clarke said her group had received reports from about 80,000 voters since the beginning of early voting and expected that figure to reach 175,000.

People are also voting in myriad ways. “Sporadic problems here and there, but election officials were remarkably well-prepared and this resulted in a largely smooth Election Day”.

In Broward County, Florida, two election clerks at a polling site were fired after they clashed over how to resolve complaints of voter intimidation, local media reported. That triggered concerns of misinformation among voters, election officials and poll workers.

Virginia attracted election watchers from liberal and conservative groups, the federal government and even internationally, but they had few issues to report on Tuesday. Just 12 days ago, a New York Times poll had her leading by 7 points, and the CNN poll of polls now has her ahead by 4 points.

The wait is nearly over for most American citizens itching to find out who becomes the 45th president of the United States as polls are closing across the states.

“Election officials and observers say they are hoping for an orderly final day of voting, but they are girding for the possibility of fights, intimidation and, perhaps, worse”, the report said.

“There is huge demand”, she said.

Although most elements of the voting process are tightly regulated and monitored, there have been occasional cases of people voting multiple times or trying to stuff the ballot box (literally), but these cases are nearly always not serious enough to trigger a new vote, Stewart said.

“We had concerns about it because there was a lot of talk about it in advance of the election about trying to recruit people to be kind of “watchdogs” at the polling places. But what the candidates are saying did not translate into meaningful enthusiasm for them to come out and vote”.

In Michigan, Fox 2 reported receiving dozens of phone calls and emails from voters claiming the machines at their polling places weren’t working correctly.

Allen said this issue was typically resolved on the spot, but if voters left without realizing they hadn’t filled out the second ballot, there was nothing election judges could do. Some in Detroit, Sterling Heights, Novi, Holly and Roseville said the machines have malfunctioned altogether or complained of them jamming.

According to The Associated Press, the Justice Department will send more than 500 staffers to 28 states on Election Day to monitor the polls.

Numbers released by the state Division of Elections Monday show that almost 6.42 million voters have either voted early or voted by mail.

UF’s Smith said 4.2 million votes had been cast by white voters, up from 3.3 million in the run-up to the 2012 presidential contest and a boost for Trump, based on many polls showing him with a wide lead over Clinton among whites.

Voters around the country faced long lines, occasional broken machines and some hot tempers Tuesday, but as the polls closed from one coast to the other, there were no signs of the large-scale fraud, intimidation or hacking some had feared.

Trump had suggested that Philadelphia was among those places ripe for voter fraud. In Los Angeles County, thousands of voters waited hours over the weekend to cast ballots, some standing in line for three hours or more.