At the end of a chaotic campaign, an election day that defied the worst fears

Michigan authorities tried to locate the source of the robocalls warning voters to “stay home.” A federal judge ordered the Postal Service to conduct an intensive search for mail ballots that had not yet been delivered. And legal skirmishes broke out in and around Philadelphia as Republicans sought to challenge votes in the critical Democratic stronghold.

The most disputed, disrupted and polarized election in generations came to an end Tuesday when a nervous but determined electorate cast the final votes. And although there were technical problems and clashes here and there, the worst fears about a chaotic end to the campaign did not materialize, even as the tension over the outcome and consequences did not subside.

With a record number of votes already cast through early voting in person and mail-in ballots, election officials across the country reported relatively smooth operations, with nothing more than the usual reports of long lines at polling places, prolonged by social distancing and machines. malfunction.

In recent days and weeks, foreign countries interfered less than they had before the 2018 midterm elections, National Security Agency Director General Paul M. Nakasone told reporters on Tuesday. And while there were reports of Russian trolls trying to amplify the discredited allegations of voter fraud, their scope was limited and there was no evidence of widespread hacking or unbridled disinformation efforts on Election Day.

Fears of violence that led some merchants and homeowners to cover their windows and doors had not been realized as of Tuesday afternoon, and there were only scattered and limited reports of intimidation in constituencies.

At the end of a day that was expected to drive the percentage of Americans voting to its highest level since 1908, with a predicted total of about 160 million votes, it became clear that the nation’s fragile electoral infrastructure was proving to be more tough that Republicans or Democrats had hoped for.

“We have not seen any major systemic problems or attempts to obstruct the vote,” said Kristen Clarke, chair of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under the Act, which heads the Electoral Protection Hotline, adding that the problems had been “isolated. and sporadic “.

Held during weeks in which coronavirus infections reached new highs across the country and with President Trump aggressively seeking to cast doubt on the integrity of the voting system, the election posed challenges that both voters and the officials who ran it coped. largely to meet.

Television footage showed poll workers in downtown Philadelphia opening and counting stacks of mail-in ballots. Voters gathered in long lines in Detroit in high spirits and with no major reports of riots.

Even in Georgia, which became a symbol of all the challenges of the nation’s electoral infrastructure when its new voting system experienced a total collapse in the spring, officials generally reported a “steady movement” in voting centers. , despite reports of some pesky problems with voting machines malfunctioning.

“It’s been consistent across the state,” Gabriel Sterling, an official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office, told a group of reporters mid-afternoon Tuesday. Wait times statewide, he said, averaged two minutes.

Across Omaha, lines at polling places were shorter than in previous days. In line were people like Ann Roth, 57, a voter who said God told her the president was going to win, and Happy Sadjo, 47, who immigrated from the West African nation of Togo and called Mr. Trump an “American dictator. “

At polling places in North Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold of the kind that Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, counts on to give him an advantage in a vital battle state, voters lined up at 6 a.m. , an hour before the polls opened.

“I think Philadelphia is ready for a change, and they are going to leave,” said Sonia Bacchus, who arrived early at William Rowen Elementary School and came equipped with a folding chair for the rows. “Oh yeah.”

The vast expansion of early voting options could reveal a very different electorate: Of the 100 million voters who cast early votes, nearly 30 percent did not vote in 2016, according to TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm.

But there was still a lot of work to do with counting the record volume of mail-in ballots, especially in states like Pennsylvania, which don’t start counting absentee ballots until Election Day and are likely to take days to complete the task.

Democrats were particularly keeping an eye on the Postal Service, which reported that its processing system had failed to record the delivery to elections offices of some 300,000 ballots, and that the slowdown in mail was having adverse effects particularly on the strongholds of Democratic parties such as Philadelphia. , Detroit, Atlanta. and South Florida.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court in Washington, DC, ordered raids on hot spots Tuesday to ensure all ballots are found and delivered. The Postal Service said it was working late into the night to try to comply with the court’s demands, albeit within its own time frame.

The entire voting process still faced the constant and continuing threat of litigation. Over the course of the elections, more than 400 election-related lawsuits were filed across the country and the courts were still rendering important rulings as the vote progressed. Overnight, a federal appeals court in Texas rejected a Republican appeal to try to eliminate more than 127,000 votes that had been cast at polling places in Harris County.

In Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, Republicans filed a complaint Tuesday against the county’s efforts to contact voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected due to errors and get them to cast provisional ballots. A federal judge agreed to hear the case Wednesday morning.

The Trump campaign also complained that election officials in Philadelphia were keeping campaign watchers too far from the counting tables. Observers were there to observe the process as absentee ballots were processed and counted for potential challenges, but the campaign had not yet filed a lawsuit until the afternoon.

In Nevada, the Trump campaign filed an emergency motion Tuesday afternoon, asking the Nevada Supreme Court to halt processing of some mail ballots in Clark County until local election officials allow greater access for observe mail ballot processing. The campaign was appealing a case it lost Monday. (Later, he filed an emergency lawsuit to extend voting hours in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.)

Those efforts were part of Trump’s long-standing campaign to cast doubt on the integrity of the entire voting system and give himself grounds to challenge any unfavorable results or a lengthy counting process alleging fraud.

Although it threatened to undermine confidence in the bottom line, it also placed voting rights at the center of the national political debate in a way not seen since the civil rights era, boosting Democratic turnout, Biden’s campaign aides said.

Election officials from both parties tended to agree, finding that all of the questions about this year’s vote forced Americans to vote earlier, spreading tension in the system for weeks and avoiding a single last-minute crush.

“Voters really thought about how they were going to vote months ago and many had a plan and have executed it,” said Kim Wyman, a Republican and secretary of state in Washington, who oversees one of the five predominantly mail-in ballots in the United States. country and became an advisor to her colleagues in other states this year. “It’s exciting that we had that kind of commitment.”

Still, the president’s attacks on the voting system also created an unusual situation in which his own supporters indicated to pollsters that they were less likely to vote by mail than their Democratic counterparts, raising a bipartisan expectation that the president would lead. the process in person. , Voting on Election Day and follow-up on mail ballots.

That division on the degree of threat of the pandemic was visible on election day. At a polling place in Dallas, an election judge refused to wear a mask indoors, raising voter complaints throughout the day.

In an evening press conference with journalists during a visit to his campaign headquarters in Virginia, the president did not repeat his bellicose and non-legal demands of the last few days that the count cease on Election Day. But he renewed his complaint that the Supreme Court did not intervene to block Pennsylvania’s decision to count all postmarked ballots on or before Election Day that arrive at elections offices until three days later.

Several states similarly plan to count late ballots, meaning that if the outcome is close, it can take days before the winner is known for sure.

On Monday night, Twitter had flagged a Trump post that predicted violence in response to the Supreme Court decision allowing Pennsylvania, for now, to stick to its extended recount deadline.

And tuesday projection A statement from the Philadelphia district attorney’s office debunking an expanded claim by Trump aides and supporters that Democrats had illegally hung a poster promoting Biden’s ballot at a downtown polling place.

“The spread of misinformation online has led to more calls to the Election Task Force hotline,” said Jane Roh, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia district attorney, “than actual incidents at polling places.”

Nick Corasaniti reported from Philadelphia, Jim Rutenberg from New York and Stephanie Saul from Atlanta. The reports were contributed by David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes, and Luke Broadwater in Washington and Dionne Searcy in Omaha, Nebraska.