Despite long lines in some places and some setbacks common to all elections, early voting in person and by mail went ahead without major problems.

This includes parts of western North Carolina hit last month by Hurricane Helene. State and local election officials, benefiting from changes made by the Republican-controlled legislature, undertook a Herculean effort to ensure residents could cast their votes while dealing with power outages, lack of water and washed out roads.

When early voting ended in North Carolina on Saturday, more than 4.4 million voters, or nearly 57% of all registered voters in the state, had cast their ballots. As of Monday, turnout in the 25 western counties affected by the hurricane was even higher: 59% of registered voters, said state elections board executive director Karen Brinson Bell.

Brinson Bell called voters and poll workers in counties affected by the hurricane “an inspiration to all of us.”

Besides the hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida, the most troubling disruptions to the election season so far were the arson attacks that damaged ballots in two drop boxes near the Oregon-Washington border. The local authorities were looking for the person responsible.

The absence of significant and widespread problems has not stopped Trump, the Republican nominee, or the Republican National Committee, which is now under his control, from making numerous allegations of fraud or election interference during the early voting period, a possible prelude to challenges later. of the elections. Day.

He has mischaracterized an ongoing investigation in Pennsylvania into approximately 2,500 potentially fraudulent voter registration applications by saying that one of the counties was “caught with 2,600 fake ballots and forms, all written by the same person.” The investigation is about registration requests; There is no indication that these are ballots.

In Georgia, Republicans sought to prohibit voters from returning mail-in ballots to their local elections office before polls close on Election Day, votes that are allowed under state law. A judge rejected their lawsuit over the weekend.

Trump and Republicans have also warned about the possibility that Democrats are recruiting masses of noncitizens to vote, a claim they have made without evidence and that flies in the face of data, including that of Republican secretaries of state. Research has consistently shown that noncitizens registering to vote are rare. Any non-citizen who does so faces the possibility of being charged with serious crimes and deported, which is a significant disincentive.

A case of noncitizen voting was detected during early voting last month and led to felony charges in Michigan after a student from China cast an illegal early vote.

This is the first presidential vote since Trump lost to Joe Biden four years ago and began several attempts to circumvent the result and remain in power. That culminated in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop certification of the results after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”

Even now, a solid majority of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden was not legitimately elected, despite reviews, audits and recounts in battleground states that affirmed Biden’s victory. A poll last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that Republicans remain much more skeptical than Democrats that their votes will be counted accurately this year.

Aiming to rebuild voter trust in a system targeted by false accusations of widespread fraud, Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states since 2020 have approved new voting restrictions. Those rules include shortening the deadline to request or return a mail-in ballot, reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes and adding identification requirements.

The final weekend before Election Day, Trump continued to falsely claim that the election was being rigged against him and said that a presidential winner should be declared on election night, before all ballots are counted.

Vice President Kamala Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s tactic of casting doubt on the election. The Democratic candidate told supporters at a weekend rally in Michigan that the tactic was intended to suggest to people “that if you vote, your vote won’t matter.” Instead, he urged people who had already voted to encourage their friends to do the same.

Over four years of election lies and voting conspiracy theories, local election officials have faced harassment and even death threats. That has caused high turnover and led to increased security for election offices and voting sites, including panic buttons and bulletproof glass.

While there have been no major reports of malicious cyber activity affecting election offices, foreign actors have been active in using fake social media profiles and websites to generate partisan vitriol and disinformation. In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence officials have attributed multiple fake videos alleging voter fraud in presidential swing states to Russia.

On the eve of Election Day, they issued a joint statement with federal law enforcement agencies warning that Russia in particular was stepping up its influence operations, including in ways that could incite violence, and would likely continue those efforts. long after the votes had been cast. .

Jen Easterly, the nation’s top election security official, urged Americans to trust state and local election officials for information about the election.

“This is especially important as we are in an election cycle with an unprecedented amount of disinformation, including disinformation that our foreign adversaries are aggressively selling and amplifying on a larger scale than ever before,” he said. “We cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”