While there were reports of election delays, glitches and disinformation in some swing states — Arizona in particular — that could loom larger as vote counting plays out, few of the major disruptions that had been feared came to pass on Election Day, reports the New York Times. Far-right media figures and Republican politicians seized on even the limited issues and typical problems that occurred to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the vote. In Maricopa County, Az., a center of false election fraud conspiracies in 2020, officials said tabulator machines at roughly 20 percent of voting centers had malfunctioned but said that they were confident that all votes would be counted, albeit with delays.
Even though an election official in Maricopa described the problem as “a technical issue,” it led Republicans such as Kari Lake, the party’s candidate for governor, and former President Trump, who suggested the malfunctioning machines were part of a plot to suppress conservative votes. Trump also capitalized on a minor problem in Detroit, where troubles with electronic poll books caused some people who showed up to vote in person to be told that they had already voted by absentee ballot. The Detroit city clerk’s office put in place procedures to ensure that all voters could cast a ballot and that each voter could cast only one ballot. Most troubles that emerged at the polls on Tuesday were pedestrian and procedural in nature — a far cry from the anxieties that had swirled for weeks about armed activists intimidating voters at ballot drop boxes and poll monitors planning aggressive voters challenges.