Voters across the country are lining up to cast their ballots Tuesday in federal, state and local elections that could shape the U.S. political landscape for years to come.
The midterm elections will determine whether Democrats keep their slim majorities in the House and Senate, or if Republicans will seize control of one or both chambers of the legislature.
The outcome could make all the difference for President Joe Biden, whose legislative hopes rest on whether Democrats can push his agenda through a hyper-partisan Congress.
Millions of Americans will also cast their votes in key races for governor, secretary of state and other offices down the ballot.
Visit NBC News for the latest Governor, Senate and House midterm elections results.
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Midterm voters sound off on economy and inflation on Election Day
7 MIN AGO
Michigan secretary of State refutes Trump’s claims about ‘bad’ absentee ballots
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson fired back at former President Donald Trump’s unproven claims about the state’s absentee voting process.
“The Absentee Ballot situation in Detroit is REALLY BAD,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. “People are showing up to Vote only to be told, ‘sorry, you have already voted.’”
Benson accused Trump of “fomenting lies” and “encouraging political violence” in Michigan.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections assisted the Detroit City Clerk’s office in resolving reported issues with e-poll books, which are used to confirm voters are registered and that they have not already voted absentee, said Aneta Kiersnowski Crisp, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of State.
Poll workers provided a numbered ballot to each voter after confirming each was registered and had not been issued an absentee ballot or voted absentee, Crisp explained.
“Occasionally this morning some e-pollbooks then displayed an error message stating that the number on the ballot at the polling place was the same as the number on an absentee ballot that had already been issued,” she added. “When this occurred, voters were correctly checked in on a paper backup list and issued ballots that were cast by the voters. These ballots will be counted.”
— Chelsey Cox
18 MIN AGO
Inflation, abortion are top concerns among midterm voters, NBC News exit poll finds
A voter casts his ballot for midterm elections at a polling station in Marietta, Georgia, November 8, 2022.
Bob Strong | Reuters
Inflation and abortion were at the front of voters’ minds as they cast their midterm election ballots, according to an NBC News exit poll.
Asked to pick among five policy issues, a 32% plurality of U.S. respondents said inflation mattered most in deciding their vote, according to the survey. The second-largest group of voters, 27%, chose abortion.
Meanwhile, 12% of voters picked crime, 12% chose gun policy, and 10% chose immigration.
Rising inflation during the first half of President Joe Biden’s term contributed to a difficult environment for Democrats, as the party tries to defend its slim majorities in the House and Senate. Republicans tried to leverage soaring prices in their effort to flip both chambers.
Meanwhile, Democrats looked to mobilize voters concerned about the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
— Jacob Pramuk
39 MIN AGO
Judge extends voting hours in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County amid paper shortage reports
Voters were turned away from dozens of polling places in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, after those sites ran out of printer paper for ballots.
The reported shortage prompted a judge to extend polling place hours in Luzerne, which has a population of over 326,000 people, by two hours, to 10 p.m. ET.
“Voters in Luzerne County through not fault of their own, were disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote,” wrote Judge Lesa Gelb of the county’s Court of Common Pleas in a one-page order extending the voting hours.
Pennsylvania Department of State spokeswoman Amy Gulli told CNBC in an email: “A judge extending polling hours because of polling place issues is not unprecedented by any means.”
Approximately 44 county polling places were affected by the shortage, Gulli said — nearly one-quarter of the county’s polling sites.
— Kevin Breuninger and Jack Stebbins
52 MIN AGO
Solution found for vote tabulation machine glitches in Maricopa County, Arizona
Bill Gates, Chairman of the Maricopa Board of Supervisors, speaks about voting machine malfunctions at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on November 08, 2022 in Phoenix, Arizona.
John Moore | Getty Images
Officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, said they have identified a solution for problems seen in a number of machines that tabulate paper ballots in some polling places.
The announcement came hours after officials said some machines were spitting out every fourth or fifth ballot in the affected machines.
“Maricopa County has identified the solution for the tabulation issues at about 60 Vote Centers,” the Maricopa County Elections Command Center said in a statement.
“County technicians have changed the printer settings, which seems to have resolved this issue,” the statement said.
“It appears some of the printers were not producing dark enough timing marks on the ballots. This solution has worked at 17 locations, and technicians deployed throughout the county are working to resolve this issue at the remaining locations,” it added.
Maricopa County, which is the fourth-largest county in the U.S., has 223 polling sites.
Before the fix was announced, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said that despite the problems, “Everyone is still getting to vote.”
“We do not believe anyone has been disenfranchised because no one has been turned away,” Gates said.
He also said that Maricopa has a “strong level of confidence” that the ballots which were rejected will be successfully tabulated by the machine at the main tabulation in Phoenix.
Ballots that were rejected by the machine were placed into separate bins at the polling places, and will be taken to that site in Phoenix.
If that process does not work, a team comprised of one person from the Democratic Party and one person from the Republican Party will hand duplicate a specific ballot, which then will be tabulated.
— Dan Mangan
57 MIN AGO
Cyberattack hits Champaign County, Illinois servers, hindering some election services
Denver election judge Danielle Puscatelli runs the ballot sorting system at the Denver Elections Division on November 8, 2022 in Denver, Colorado.
Michael Ciaglo | Getty Images
Champaign County, Illinois said it was targeted with a cyber attack on Election Day, and an official at the federal cybersecurity agency CISA said it was aware of the issue.
The Champaign County Clerk’s Office said “connectivity issues and computer server performance [were] being impacted” and it “believes these are due to cyber-attacks on the network and servers.”
“For the past month the Champaign County Clerk’s website has been the target of repeated D-DOS attacks,” the clerk said on its verified Facebook page.
None of the attacks have been successful, however, and “no data or information has been compromised and the election is secure.” Champaign County is home to approximately 200,000 people.
“These cyber-attacks are a strategic and coordinated effort to undermine and destabilize our democratic process. The intent is to discourage you from voting. Please do not fall victim to this,” the clerk’s office said.
It was not clear who was behind the attacks. But an official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal government’s chief agency charged with identifying and preventing cyberattacks, said the agency was aware of the apparent attack and would follow up with officials in Champaign County.
American intelligence and cybersecurity agencies are on high alert this Election Day for any signs of foreign attempts to target voting infrastructure or undermine confidence in the election results.
— Christina Wilkie
1 HOUR AGO
Trump is spreading misinformation to sow ‘fear and mistrust’ in Arizona midterms, state elections official says
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally ahead of the midterm elections, in Miami, Florida, U.S., November 6, 2022.
Marco Bello | Reuters
An Arizona elections official accused former President Donald Trump of “spreading misinformation” after he cast doubts on the integrity of the state’s midterm elections.
Arizona Assistant Secretary of State Allie Bones accused Trump of sowing false claims about the state’s hotly contested midterms “for the sole purpose of causing fear and mistrust in our election processes.”
“I remain confident that our election is safe and secure because we have a robust mechanism of catching issues like these and addressing them,” Bones said in a statement to CNBC.
The statement came after Trump, on his social media site Truth Social, claimed without providing evidence that “Maricopa County in Arizona looks like a complete Voter Integrity DISASTER” and that “Reports are coming in from Arizona that the Voting Machines are not properly working in predominantly Republican/Conservative areas.”
Trump also posted complaints about the elections in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two more swing states hosting key midterm races. Trump lost all three of those key states to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election and falsely claimed fraud led to his defeat.
Bones’ statement added that Arizona’s tabulators “are equipped with secure drop boxes as a backup in case there is an issue.”
“This is not a partisan issue, and it is not atypical for ballots to be tabulated at a central count facility – in fact, 8 counties (out of 15) only count ballots at central facilities after the close of polls,” Bones said. “Ballots that aren’t tabulated at a voting center today will be taken to the central count facility for tabulation after the polls close at 7 p.m. Every eligible voter can be confident that their voice will be heard, and their vote counted.”
— Kevin Breuninger
2 HOURS AGO
Florida elections boss blocks DOJ monitors from entering 3 polling sites
Florida’s top elections official is blocking federal election monitors from entering polling sites in three counties where they had been deployed to ensure compliance with a federal civil rights law.
“They can certainly be outside of the polling places,” Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd said of the Justice Department’s election monitors when asked about the policy at a press conference.
The move from Byrd, a Republican, joins Florida with GOP officials in Missouri who had also kept the DOJ monitors out of the polling locations.
“This is not to be confrontational in any way,” Byrd said when asked if the monitors had been physically blocked from entering polling places in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.
Byrd argued that the DOJ, not Florida, had changed its policy by asking to enter the sites. He said that some counties had consent agreements with the DOJ in the past to allow those federal monitors to enter polling sites, but said that those agreements had expired and had not been renewed for 2022.
A DOJ official noted to CNBC that the agency has been monitoring elections as a standard practice for decades to confirm compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. DOJ election monitors did not go inside polling places in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The DOJ on Monday announced its plans to monitor polls in two dozen states, in a press release that closely matched similar announcements in previous election cycles.
— Kevin Breuninger
2 HOURS AGO
Trump to host an election night party at Mar-a-Lago, tout his role in helping GOP candidates
An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. August 15, 2022.
Marco Bello | Reuters
Former President Donald Trump will host an election returns party at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, where he is expected to tout the role he has played in endorsing and stumping for Republican candidates.
The media is invited to cover the event, and Trump has released a new press release detailing all he has done to help more than 330 Republican candidates this year in primary and general election races nationwide. The release also notes that Trump has held 30 rallies since he left office in 2021, and held 50 in-person fundraisers to benefit Republican candidates.
Trump’s splashy election night event at his private Palm Beach club comes just a day after the former president teased Nov. 15 as the date on which he might launch his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump’s daughter, Tiffany Trump, will be getting married at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 12.
— Christina Wilkie
