“A superior court judge in Alaska denied Democrat Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign access to records containing information about rejected absentee ballots, saying the request is ‘not reasonable’ given the time crunch election officials face in counting votes from last week’s election,” the Washington Sun reports.

“Months after her death, a candidate for a southwest Washington office won the race,” NewsNation reports.

“Records from the Washington Secretary of State show Liz Green is set to be re-elected as a commissioner for Skamania County’s Public Utility District. But the 64-year-old Willard resident died earlier in July.”

“Ahead of the midterms, conservative election activists discussed plans to wield a powerful new weapon in the war against fraud: a data tool built by one of their own that could identify suspicious voters and help with contesting their ballots,” ProPublica reports.

“The system was put to the test this week in Forsyth County, Georgia, where a member of the county’s election board provided other officials with what he suggested was evidence of wrongdoing: four allegedly dead voters.”

“But it turns out all four are alive and well.”

“Last summer, Mississippi began an effort to ‘continue to build on the accuracy of Mississippi’s voter rolls and strengthen the integrity of elections,’ as Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson put it,” The Atlantic reports.

“Using data from the credit-reporting agency Experian, the state scrutinized its list of registered voters, searching for anyone who may have moved, left the state, or died. Tens of thousands of Mississippians had their active registrations shifted to inactive—a crucial step toward purging them from the rolls.”

“On Tuesday, many of those inactive voters showed up at the polls, only to be told that they were not properly registered. Their best option was to fill out an affidavit ballot, a more involved process that increases the likelihood that a vote will not count.”

“Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rebuffed President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, opened an investigation into a local race after officials discovered a memory card with uncounted votes that flipped the result to a Republican win,” Bloomberg reports.

“The probe focuses on why the memory card with several hundred votes wasn’t uploaded to Seminole County’s election management system on Nov. 3… Officials discovered the it after the secretary of state’s office identified a discrepancy between voter check-ins to polling stations and total ballots cast.”

“The campaign of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola sued the Alaska Division of Elections on Friday in an attempt to make public the names of Alaskans whose absentee ballots have been rejected by the division,” the Alaska Beacon reports.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact takes effect when states with a combined 270 electoral votes have joined. As of today, 18 states and D.C. with 222 electoral votes have signed on, leaving the compact 48 short.

The 2026 midterms put the compact closer than it has ever been: Democrats will control the governorship and both legislative chambers in five states with 61 electoral votes that haven’t yet joined.

If enough sign on, the 2028 election could be the first decided by the national popular vote.

New York Times: “Mr. Trump had started his second term intent on harnessing the power of the federal government to resurface false claims that widespread fraud had tainted his earlier defeat — and to use those claims to assert unprecedented control over the midterms this year.”

“He failed.”

“Voters so thoroughly rejected Republicans on Tuesday, ushering in one of the largest Democratic House majorities in generations and flipping seats that had been red for decades, that it became impossible to blame the outcome on fraud.”

“President Trump wrote Thursday that incumbent Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) should receive the vote totals for Dan J. Sullivan, a Senate candidate in Alaska’s tumultuous race who has the same name as the incumbent lawmaker,” Axios reports.

Said Trump: “The vote totals for the Fake Dan Sullivan, plus the other ‘slug’ that the Dems put on the Ballot, should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over.”

He added: “He easily wins. There is no other fair solution!”

Andrew Egger: “The whole game changed last night. We’re all still grappling with what Democrats’ once-in-a-century rout will mean…. Trumpism has not been fully defeated, not yet. But one of its darkest elements has been smashed for good.”

“In 2020, Trump tried to steal a presidential election by sheer force. After he failed, he and his movement spent years systematically grinding down the institutions that got in his way. After his re-election, he stocked the government with loyalists and attempted to seize unprecedented federal control over elections. The inescapable question has hung in the air like a miasma: What happens if he tries to do it again?”

“Last night, those fears popped like a soap bubble. Whatever dirty tricks Trump might have been planning—and you can bet he was planning them—were trampled by the stampede of the Democratic wave, which was, to borrow a phrase, too big to rig.”

“Some counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania extended voting hours and delayed ballot counting, after reports of a small number of technical problems at polling places Tuesday,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Atlantic: “Many GOP candidates seem to realize that to stand a chance, they need their voters to trust the system and cast their ballot. Political strategists and election experts told us that there are diminishing returns for the GOP in trying to persuade Americans to care about Trump’s six-year-old fraud claims.”

“The system worked well enough to reelect Trump, and the president has failed to produce credible evidence that voter fraud is a threat to the midterms.”

“State officials have largely taken securing the 2026 midterm elections into their own hands after nearly two years of federal program and funding cuts during the second Trump administration,” Axios reports.

“The reduction in federal support has come as AI tools threaten to make it easier for hackers to uncover software vulnerabilities, launch cyberattacks, and spread disinformation that undermines trust in election results.”

“Just because a security flaw exists doesn’t mean hackers can exploit it to manipulate election results. Nearly all U.S. elections maintain paper records that can be used to verify electronic tallies.”

“Polling sites are open in Tuesday’s midterms; however, some election officials in regions across the U.S. have been forced to move polling locations due to severe weather,” NewsNation reports.

“Heavy rains and flash flooding in a swath of the Southwest were expected to make it harder for some voters to reach polling places in parts of Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.”

“Election Day has finally arrived. Americans are headed to the polls, and that means the Trump administration is preparing ways to cast doubt on any unfavorable results,” Rolling Stone reports.

“The Justice Department announced on Tuesday that it is deploying 1,000 federal ‘election monitors’ to polling places around the country. The monitors will be sent to critical races across all 50 states, including Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Maine, Iowa, and Minnesota. The mobilization comes as Republicans are expected to lose control of the House of Representatives, and may also be stripped of their Senate majority.”

“The Trump administration’s monthslong campaign to challenge how states conduct elections and pushback against those efforts come to a head as Election Day arrives Tuesday,” CNBC reports.

“Those efforts have included lawsuits, an attempt to implement a new U.S. Postal Service rule for mail-in ballots this year, threatening letters to state election officials and a plan to increase the number of poll monitors.”

“The administration could continue such efforts beyond Election Day.”