With the midterm elections only hours away, some Americans say they are worried about federal interference in the vote and about potential efforts by Republicans to overturn the results if the party fares poorly, according to an account of those concerns.
For years, President Trump has raised doubts about the country's electoral system by promoting debunked claims of mail-ballot fraud, faulty voting machines and voting rolls filled with noncitizens. As polls show the Republican majority in Congress in peril, he has ramped up those attacks, even offering a $1 million reward to tipsters who help secure a voting-fraud conviction.
That rhetoric has left some voters uneasy about what might come next. Tiffany Hall, a 56-year-old physician who lives in a Cincinnati suburb, said she was concerned the election could be disrupted in ways that shift the margins. "I am very concerned that the election will be disrupted in ways that will affect the margins," she said.
Civil rights groups and labor unions recently sued the Trump administration in an effort to block the potential deployment of federal agents at polling places.
Hall, who is Black, voted early on Saturday with her husband and her teenage daughter, who was casting a ballot for the first time. She invoked the struggles of the civil rights movement and said she was worried about efforts to suppress the vote.
Most voters say they trust that the election results will be accurate, but some worry that the president will try to sow doubt about the outcome.
Sources: The New York Times Politics.