Election Day arrives after a surge in early voting, with observers keeping close watch at the polls

WASHINGTON (AP) — The final day of voting in this year’s midterm elections arrived Tuesday against a backdrop of uncertainty after a year in which President Donald Trump has tried to interfere in how states run their elections and sown doubts about the outcome should Republicans lose.

Millions of Americans already have cast their ballots, with early voting turnout on pace to eclipse that of the last midterm elections. In contrast to the president’s continued rhetoric about election cheating, voting so far has unfolded with relatively few problems.

Trump has spent months trying to use the power of the presidency to put his thumb on the scale of this year’s elections, which will determine whether his party keeps control of Congress.

His Justice and Homeland Security departments have been involved in a massive hunt for voters who are not U.S. citizens, at one point engaging in a made-for-the-cameras predawn operation that led to more than two dozen arrests in California. The Department of Justice was planning its largest-ever effort to monitor Election Day polling places, countered by an even larger effort among Democrats and allied groups, and at the president's urging had sued to block certification of Alaska’s results if the outcome of the Senate race favored Democrats.

At the same time, Trump’s constant false claims about widespread voter fraud led election officials and Democratic groups across the country to plan for the possibility of immigration agents at voting sites or federal officers seizing voting machines. His administration has insisted that no armed federal officials would be guarding the polls on Election Day.

In the run-up to Tuesday, none of the steps Democrats most feared had come to pass, and the Republican administration’s legal maneuvers had been largely blocked by the courts.

One of the Trump administration’s most high-profile attempts to interfere in state elections was turned away Monday night by the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected its push to force California to set aside thousands of ballots as part of its search for noncitizen voters. In another Monday night ruling, a federal judge said the Trump administration must stop sending voter lists of alleged noncitizens to election officials.

Even the administration's own record of arrests and charges has demonstrated what research and state investigations have made clear for years — that instances of noncitizens casting ballots are extremely rare.

Monday’s rulings followed another defeat for the president at the Supreme Court less than two months ago, when it rejected his attempt to limit mail balloting through changes at the Postal Service. That directive was included in one of two executive orders Trump has signed during his second term that attempted to federalize certain aspects of elections, even though the Constitution gives the states, and sometimes Congress, the authority to set election rules.

The first polling sites were open Tuesday morning across much of the East Coast, with few disruptions so far.

In New York’s suburban Westchester County, where some voters are casting ballots in a competitive U.S. House race, election officials said an issue with voting machines accepting paper ballots was requiring ballots to be placed in emergency bags for later counting. But they stressed that the ballots would remain secure and monitored, that they would later be counted and that voters could continue casting ballots while they worked to resolve the issue.

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 administrators in the Navajo Nation announced changes to several of its polling locations, and in Utah's rural San Juan County, voters were being allowed to vote electronically on Tuesday because some of them may not be able to reach polling places.

Election administrators and voting rights advocates have been advising voters casting late absentee ballots to use drop boxes or deliver them to polling places in person rather than mail them. The advice came after concerns emerged that recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations could result in postmarking delays that would mean mail ballots could not be counted. Late-arriving ballots or late postmarks disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in California, Oregon and Washington, which mail ballots to all voters, during this year's primaries.

The most significant disruptions ahead of Election Day were the Trump administration’s attempts to interfere. Voting rights groups, Democrats and the Justice Department have been exchanging a flurry of legal filings over alleged noncitizen voters, federal election monitors, federal intimidation of election officials and other concerns. They reveal how Trump's attempts to expand federal control over state-run elections — combined with high-stakes races — are resulting in court battles that could extend past Election Day into ballot counting and certification of the results.

Election law experts said Trump’s lawsuits go beyond historic norms, but they said the administration’s legal arguments were unlikely to convince the courts.

Trump also has ramped up his own equivocations about whether the election will be legitimate, as he has in the past. A week before Election Day, when a reporter asked him if he would accept the results, he offered a qualified answer.

“I will if they are honest,” he said.

Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J., Kathy McCormack in Window Rock, Ariz., and Philip Marcelo in New York contributed to this report.

Voters arrive to cast their ballots at the Washington Township House polling place during the midterm election in Oregonia, Ohio, early Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots at a polling place at Central Bucks South High School on Election Day in Warrington, Pa., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Voters cast their ballots at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A volunteer helps prepare voting stations before the site opens at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A volunteer helps prepare voting stations before the site opens at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Voting rules are posted at a polling location open for early voting at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Hundreds of people line up to cast their ballots at a polling location open for early voting at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

UCLA law student Jonah Zimmer works on his ballot at a polling location open for early voting at the Hammer Museum, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Voters enter the C. Blythe Andrews Jr. Public Library to cast their ballots on the final day of early voting for midterm elections in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Octavio Jones)

Whit, 2, sits on the shoulders of father Hayden Anderson-Michaud as he casts his ballot at a polling location open for early voting, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Detentions, resignations, switching of sides, attempts to destroy evidence of wrongdoing.

News has been coming in at such a pace in the wake of former Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vucic's electoral defeat on Oct. 25 that a website dubbed “system breakdown” has been set up anonymously, with AI feeding information in real time.

From high school students accusing their principal of throwing away documentation to the closure of a bank linked by local media to Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party, the public has been gripped by the fast-moving developments in the postelection week.

Somewhat chaotic reports are seen by many in Serbia as a sign that Vucic's carefully crafted power system is collapsing swiftly following the stunning victory of a student movement at the early parliamentary ballot.

The Students' List winners are yet to formally take over power in the government administration, security agencies and the army. But the seismic shift in the balance of power is pushing events to unfold before the actual takeover takes place.

Despite the electoral defeat, a defiant Vucic — now described as the leader of the opposition — has continued with his daily appearances on loyal media, accusing the student-led movement of “revolutionary terror” and vowing to fight back.

On Sunday evening, Vucic told Pink TV that “naturally, this is hard for my family and those who love me, but I am ready for everything and I will persist through anything.” Denying crime links, Vucic said he is not afraid of possible arrest because there will be no evidence against him.

“I don’t sign anything … and nothing will be found,” he said. “They don’t have anything.”

Officials jailed so far include Vucic’s chief of criminal police, Marko Kricak, and another senior police official, both suspected of abuse of office in connection with a high-profile murder investigation.

Kricak was notorious over accusations that he personally threatened a female student with rape during anti-government protests, but he was not jailed over those allegations.

On Monday, authorities also detained Davor Macura, the owner of private Alta Bank, whose license has been revoked. Macura is suspected of trying to take millions of dollars out of the bank's vault and faces charges of abuse of office, according to prosecutors.

While waiting to form the new government, the election winners have called on prosecutors and judges to start doing their jobs or step down.

Scores of investigations into alleged top-level corruption cases remained incomplete under the previous government, including one into a Nov. 1, 2024, train station tragedy that triggered two years of student-led anti-graft protests.

Now, the Serbian public is waiting to hear what will come out of a review into some of the longstanding probes after the student movement promised there will no longer be untouchable officials.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Higher Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade complained of “an atmosphere of persecution and lynching,” after the election, along with “open political pressure by some social and political actors.”

The statement said the alleged pressure was designed to force resignations and that the European Union mission in Belgrade and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been informed.

Prosecutors have been swamped with new complaints over incidents that vary from suspected election fraud to threats and violence against protesters, journalists and activists. Organized crime prosecutors also initiated procedures to determine whether some of them had been placed under illegal surveillance.

On Monday, lawyer Ivan Ninic alleged a “criminal conspiracy” involving a justice ministry official and over three dozen prison wardens across Serbia, saying they pressured or bribed inmates to vote for Vucic during last week's ballot.

Ninic presented what he said were screenshots of online chats, with officials exchanging information about how many votes they managed to gather — Vucic's SNS won overwhelmingly in Serbia's prisons.

In Mali Zvornik, on the border with Bosnia, police detained six people accused of granting false residence papers to Bosnian citizens so they could vote for Vucic's party at the election.

Some of the mainstream media in Serbia that were at the forefront of Vucic's propaganda machinery have been the first to regroup.

Previously staunchly pro-Vucic media outlets quickly adopted a more neutral position, while some television channels canceled chunks of their programs altogether and owners reportedly fled the country. State RTS television overhauled its leadership and apologized to its viewers for unprofessional reporting.

But some of Vucic's main mouthpieces, like broadcasters Informer and Pink, remain loyal, hosting the former leader daily in their programs.

The election was for Serbia's 250-member parliament and did not include local governments across the country. Now, calls are mounting for early municipal elections.

Vucic's SNS lost in the capital, Belgrade, and most other towns, after it previously controlled the country down to every village, with the exception of one urban municipality in the southern city of Nis.

Throughout Serbia, employees in theaters, museums, culture associations, schools and hospitals are demanding that SNS-appointed managers immediately step down.

In Belgrade, Fifth High School principal Ognjen Mrvaljevic denied that he was throwing away relevant school documentation, N1 television reported. He said in comments carried by local media that he was just getting rid of unnecessary papers.

Vucic's party's “expiration date has passed,” analyst Slobodan Stupar said. “It will all fall like dominoes.”

A defaced poster of Aleksandar Vucic, leader of the right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), lies on the pavement outside the National Assembly, after he conceded defeat in the parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Armin Durgut)

People celebrate the night after the student-led opposition movement won the parliamentary election and defeated Aleksandar Vucic's ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), in Belgrade, Serbia, late Monday, Oct. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Armin Durgut)

People celebrate after Aleksandar Vucic, leader of the right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) conceded defeat in the parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

A client reads a posted sign in front of closed Alta Bank, after Serbia's Central Bank revoked Alta Bank's operating license and launched bankruptcy proceedings to protect the bank's depositors in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Aleksandar Vucic, leader of the right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) leaves after casting his vote in a parliamentary election in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)