Swift resolutions to Election Day snags, including long lines, broken machines, and isolated instances of threatening behavior, have led to an overall smooth voting process as the first polls prepare to close.
The handful of incidents that have arisen have largely been met with quick responses from election officials or law enforcement, prompting relief from experts who worried that bad actors could disrupt the voting process.
“Overall, we’re seeing, despite the challenges, despite the disinformation, things going pretty smoothly all across the country,” David Becker, Center for Election Innovation and Research executive director, told reporters around noon on Tuesday.
Below are some of the problems that have cropped up during voting hours.
FBI says two false news items deceptively used bureau’s branding
The FBI said Tuesday that it came across fabricated news items that were misusing FBI branding to promote inaccurate information related to the election.
One item was a news clip and video alleging an unfounded claim that polling sites are facing a “high terror threat,” the FBI said in a statement.
“This video is not authentic and does not accurately represent the current threat posture or polling location safety,” the FBI said.
Another video falsely stated that five prisons across three battleground states, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, had “rigged inmate voting” in favor of one political party, the FBI said.
Pennsylvania county software glitches
Cambria County, a red county in Pennsylvania, sought court authorization to keep polls open later after running into technical issues that caused long lines and people to leave without casting their ballots, according to the county’s emergency petition.
The Pennsylvania State Department said in a statement that the county was grappling with “in-precinct scanning problems” and that a judge had extended voting for two hours, until 10:00 p.m.
“Voters in line before 8 p.m. will be able to vote on the county’s regular voting system,” the department said. “Voters who get in line after 8 p.m. will vote by provisional ballot. Polls in all other counties will still close at 8 p.m., and those counties may begin reporting their unofficial results at that time.”
Georgia bomb threats attributed to Russia
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Tuesday afternoon during a press conference that his office worked quickly with federal law enforcement to determine that bomb threats made in a handful of precincts on the morning of Election Day originated from Russia.
“All but two precincts, to our knowledge, did not stop any voting,” Raffensperger said, adding that the two counties postponed voting for 30 minutes.
The FBI also issued a statement, saying there were non-credible bomb threats across “several states” and that many were coming from Russian email addresses.
“The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” the bureau said.
Nevada signature match hurdle: ‘Young people don’t have signatures these days’
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar began managing expectations on Election Day eve, saying that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots had signatures that could not be verified and that election officials would need to work to cure them.
On Tuesday, Cisco said the challenge in the key battleground state persisted, and he attributed it to young voters who do not know how to sign their names.
“It’s mostly the fact that young people don’t have signatures these days … And when they did register to vote through the automatic voter registration process, they signed a digital pad at DMV, and that became their license signature,” Cisco told the New York Times.
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The curing process involves election workers following up with voters to verify their signatures. Voters have up to seven days after Election Day to take care of this, meaning that if any of the races are too close to call, it could take up to several days to know the results.
Suspect who ‘smelled like fuel’ arrested at U.S. Capitol
U.S. Capitol Police officers arrested a man attempting to enter the visitor center of the Capitol building on Tuesday. Police said in a statement that he “smelled like fuel, had a torch, and a flare gun.”
Police Chief Thomas Manger said in a press conference that the man was intercepted during routine screening and that he remains in custody while authorities investigate the incident. He said it appears unrelated to Election Day.
“There’s no indication right now that it had anything to do with the election,” Manger said.
