Nearly 90 million Americans are expected to descend on the polls today under the watchful eyes of federal monitors, voting rights advocates, conservative watchdogs and even international observers looking for anything from dirty tricks to acts of violence.
Problems are being anticipated, particularly in Southern states freed under a 2013 Supreme Court ruling from needing federal clearance for changes in voting procedures. Fourteen states with new election laws, from Arizona to New Hampshire, also could face difficulties.
Extra attention is being paid by both liberal and conservative interest groups because the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tightened at the end of their long campaigns. And Trump urged his supporters to watch polling stations in "certain areas" for signs of a "rigged" election.
Observers came from as far as Europe and South America to see whether America's democratic system could withstand pressures from within the political system and beyond — extending, perhaps, to efforts by Russia and others to hack into voting systems.
Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, warned that 2016 voting could shape up as "the most problematic election in 50 years," a reference to the violent protests and assassinations that marked the 1968 election.
The most likely problems are those that crop up during every election, such as closed polling stations, confusion over new voting requirements and faulty voting machines. Those and other problems led to long early voting lines in North Carolina and Texas this year.
Until Tuesday, most of the battles have been fought in federal courtrooms rather than the streets. The Supreme Court weighed in Monday, denying efforts by Democrats to bar Trump's supporters from polling places in Ohio over the chance they would intimidate voters. Conservatives previously won an Arizona legal battle over how ballots are collected, while liberals prevailed in voting rights lawsuits in North Carolina and Wisconsin.
The Justice Department dispatched more than 500 monitors to 28 states, a reduction from nearly 800 in 2012 that reduces the government's presence inside polling places. Their task: to determine whether voters are subjected to racial discrimination or other barriers related to language differences or disabilities.
The group includes linguists fluent in Spanish and a variety of Asian and Native American languages. And at each of 94 U.S. attorney's offices, prosecutors were assigned to handle allegations of voter fraud and suppression.
A coalition of civil rights groups said it has more than 4,500 volunteers fielding calls and funneling information to its "election protection" command center in Washington, D.C., as well as monitors in 29 states. It planned at least three news conferences throughout the day to publicize problems that could keep people from the polls, with an emphasis on minorities, the elderly and people with disabilities.
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