In the final hours before the midterm elections, some Americans say they are worried about federal interference in the vote and potential efforts by Republicans to overturn the results if the party is unsuccessful.
For years, President Trump has sowed doubts about the nation’s electoral system by promoting debunked claims of mail-ballot fraud, faulty voting machines and voting rolls riddled with noncitizens. As polls show the Republican majority in Congress in peril, Mr. Trump has ramped up his baseless attacks, even dangling a $1 million reward to tipsters who help secure a voting-fraud conviction.
Some voters are nervous about what he might do next.
“I am very concerned that the election will be disrupted in ways that will affect the margins,” said Tiffany Hall, a 56-year-old physician who lives in a suburb of Cincinnati.
Civil rights groups and labor unions recently sued the Trump administration, seeking to block the potential deployment of federal agents at the polls.
Ms. Hall, who is Black, voted early on Saturday with her husband and her teenage daughter, who was voting for the first time. Ms. Hall invoked the struggles of the civil rights movement and said she was worried about efforts to suppress the vote.
So is Jeanne Russell, a 77-year-old retiree and registered Democrat who lives in Verona Island, Maine. “I’m kind of foreseeing that there will be some dirty tricks,” she said.
But Ms. Russell added that she was optimistic that election officials were prepared to respond to any intervention by the federal government.
Nearly three-quarters of voters said they largely trusted that the results of Tuesday’s election would be accurate, including large majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents, according to a recent New York Times/Siena poll.
But half of likely voters said that they were worried about the possibility that Republicans might try to overturn the outcome of the election. By comparison, 31 percent of voters said they were worried about Democrats doing the same.
Mike Massie, a 52-year-old teacher who recently voted in suburban Cincinnati, said he was not concerned about widespread voting irregularities. He recalled all the hoops he had to jump through recently after he moved and notified election officials about his new address.
“It would take some duplicity to try to cast a fraudulent vote,” said Mr. Massie, who described himself as a centrist who leans Republican. Asked if he was concerned about illegal voters, he said, “If there are any, I don’t think it’s enough to sway an election.”
Esther Bowling, 43, of Trenton, Ohio, is not so sure about that. She was a strong supporter of a Republican-backed measure in 2023 that required voters in her state to present a driver’s license, passport or other official photo ID to vote in person. Voters in Ohio will now consider a ballot measure to enshrine that requirement in the state constitution.
“If you are an American citizen you should have to show a photo ID to vote,” Ms. Bowling said.
Civil rights activists argue that such laws can disenfranchise Black people, younger and older voters, and those serving in the military and living abroad. Photo ID laws have gained traction in Republican-led states since Mr. Trump and his allies sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
In Georgia, some voters casting ballots this year recalled Mr. Trump’s phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find” 11,780 votes.
Lasley Gober, 74, a retired Atlanta schoolteacher, said she was feeling uneasy about the midterm elections since January, when the F.B.I. seized ballots and other voting materials related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga. The raid was part of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into the vote in the most populous county in Georgia.
“I’m a little scared about what they may try to do, to act like they won this,” Ms. Gober said.
Earlier this year, under pressure from voting rights groups, the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature abandoned a redistricting effort that would have erased U.S. House seats in majority-Black districts. That effort was weighing on Mary Hooks, a civil rights activist in Atlanta, as she considered the candidates on the 2026 ballot.
“They’re going to try to take the vote by hook or crook,” she said. “We’re going to see all manner of ways in which they’re going to continue to suppress the vote.”
Murray Carpenter contributed reporting from Maine and Sean Keenan from Atlanta.
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