By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Millions of people who waited until Election Day to vote cast their ballots on Tuesday in an American democratic tradition that is historically strained, to say the least, while millions more voted early by mail and in person, hoping to avoid any last minute problems or even violence at polling places.

Even before the polls closed in many states, the talking heads on TV were flashing the races under scrutiny in bright red and blue on the tube, most too close to call, trying to keep people’s attention even though we most likely won’t know the outcome of the key House and Senate races for days, if not weeks. Of course they have Big Pharma drugs to sell on the commercial breaks, as control of the country hangs in the balance.

One big race in the state of Maryland was called on Election Night, however, showing a commanding victory by author and former nonprofit chief Wes Moore, a Democrat, who defeated a far-right Trump “Big Lie” Republican, Dan Cox, to become the first Black person elected governor in Maryland history.

Moore, 44, delivered a major victory to Democrats in a tough national election cycle for the party, reclaiming the governor’s mansion after eight years of Republican rule on a vow to “leave no one behind” — a message that resonated in a diversifying state where people of color have recently become the majority.

“We leave no one behind. And that is not just a mantra,” Moore said during the campaign. “It is a value statement. And it is not just a value statement. Come January, that will be the new mission of this state.”

The son of a Jamaican immigrant who was raised by a single mother, Moore becomes just the third Black person elected governor in American history — after Deval Patrick in Massachusetts and L. Douglas Wilder in Virginia.

Voting Problems

While problems were reported in many key battleground states around the country, my own experience of voting in person for the first time on Election Day in Maryland went unbelievably smooth and quick, with no long lines, no armed Trump kooks in the parking lot, and no stress over the ballots or machines (see more on that story below, with video).

The New York Times is reporting a couple of early trends. Young voters and Black voters have dipped below the numbers they recorded when Democrats took control of the House in 2018, according to nationwide and state by state early voting data from the analysis group Catalist, which could be a problem for Democrats. But women voters seemed to have surged in early voting in the key battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania, and other places, and voters of color appeared to come out strongly in early ballots cast in some key states, notably Nevada.

“The midterm elections of 2022 are shaping up to be among the most consequential in years, as voters determine which party will control the House and the Senate, 36 governorships and an array of critical state positions, from secretaries of state to supreme court justices,” the Times says. “Their choices will influence the rest of the Biden presidency and could impact representative democracy itself.”

What is clear is that Election Night will not provide the answers to the hottest political questions of 2022: Which party will control the Senate? If Republicans win the House, as is widely expected, by how wide a margin will they control it? And how many governorships will each party hold?

“Polls will not close until late in some of the biggest battlegrounds, Arizona, Nevada, California and Oregon. And vote counting is likely to be protracted in Pennsylvania, a state where a scorching governor’s race will shape abortion laws and where a tight Senate campaign could determine party control in Congress’s upper chamber,” the Times says.

Voting glitches and other problems popped up in a number of states, but so far they seem minor and there was no reports of violence at press time.

Georgia

The entire battle for the Senate could come down to Georgia, much like the presidential election in 2020. Will the women, African Americans, college educated Republicans and independents come through again?

Voters across Georgia cast their ballots in the heated race between Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and Herschel Walker, his Republican opponent, a former star fullback.

The state saw record turnout for early voting ahead of Election Day.

But on Monday, a deadline for more than 1,000 absentee ballots in suburban Cobb County was extended to Nov. 14 after bureaucratic mistakes resulted in the ballots not being mailed in a timely manner.

In Johns Creek, Ga., just outside of Atlanta, officials said two poll workers, a woman and her son, were relieved of their duties Tuesday morning after a co-worker overheard a disturbing comment from the woman. The woman, according to one of her social media posts provided by a state official, had been present at the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 by supporters of former President Trump.

If neither Warnock or Walker wins 50 percent of the vote, control of the Senate might have to be determined in a runoff — and not until after Thanksgiving, Dec. 6.

Pennsylvania

A judge ruled that all polling places in Luzerne County must stay open an additional two hours, until 10 p.m. Eastern Time, after several locations reportedly ran out of paper for printing ballots.

Philadelphia says it may take a few days to report all votes, while Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, will report relatively quickly. It has processed the 155,000 mail-in ballots received so far and will report those results soon after polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Other issues, such as a question of counting thousands of improperly dated mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, will likely become a focus of intense debate in the days ahead.

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general who was unopposed in the Democratic primary, faced Doug Mastriano, a retired colonel and Republican state senator who was a central figure in trying to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. It appears Shapiro won that heated race handily, about 56 percent to 42 percent, repelling one of Trump’s most ardent election denying right wingers.

There is a close race here between Mehmet Oz, the Republican celebrity doctor, and John Fetterman, the Democratic lieutenant governor.

It was reported that a few polling places opened late in Pennsylvania, but Fetterman was still leading the race as of midnight Tuesday.

Could it be the endorsement of Fetterman by Oprah carried the day? It certainly motivated women in the urban and suburban areas to show up to vote for Fetterman, in and around Philadelphia especially.

Arizona

Election Day revealed an expected battle over the mechanics of voting in some key, battleground states. In Arizona, the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, has already spread inaccurate claims about a mishap with voting machines in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous.

Before the election, a federal judge ordered armed activists to stop patrolling ballot drop boxes across the state.

But the malfunctioning ballot-counting machines in Maricopa County prompted a surge of voter fraud claims across right-wing media, though local officials said voters could still cast ballots. A series of technical glitches disrupted ballot counting on Tuesday at about one in four voting centers in the country controlled by Republican officials, not Democrats. But the right wing fake news attack machine tried to rekindle the embers of baseless voter fraud claims fire on social media.

Officials in Maricopa, one of the nation’s most populous counties and a focus of efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, said the problem affected ballot tabulation machines in about 60 of the county’s 223 voting centers. In the afternoon, the county said it had isolated the problem: printers were not making dark enough markings on the ballots.

Michigan

In Michigan, a court denied a Republican-backed lawsuit that would have disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in Detroit who cast absentee ballots. Also in Detroit, some voters in the morning faced glitches with electronic poll books that showed their votes had already been recorded before they cast ballots, according to voter protection groups said.

There were some issues with the machines that process voters in certain Michigan counties. In Detroit, the voters who were told their ballots had already been cast because of glitches in electronic poll records were informed they could vote provisionally and their ballots would be counted. The city clerk’s office has put procedures in place to ensure all voters can cast a ballot and each voter only casts one ballot, they said.

Still, the Republican secretary of state candidate, Kristina Karamo, who has promoted baseless conspiracy theories about Democrats stealing the 2020 election, seized on the issue on Twitter, claiming it was evidence of “fraud” in Detroit, with no evidence.

In Milwaukee, a woman was told to stop taking photos of voters and their ballot envelopes as they returned them.

Connecticut

There are already reports of Trump anti-democracy squads engaged in shenanigans to prevent people from voting in places. A source working for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Connecticut, a fellow University of Alabama grad who also now lives in Maryland, says so far, two trucks full of men in paramilitary gear with Trump flags have come through the parking lots of two election training sites, in Hartford and Danbury, and Connecticut is a blue-liberal state and not a high profile battleground state.

Construction barriers were up around the polling place, yet the parking lot was already full with cars containing alleged construction permits that have not moved since Friday.

“If voters can’t park, they leave,” the source said, and was advised to park in the teacher lot at the school, because “it’s safer!”

Florida and Missouri

In Florida and Missouri, state officials blocked federal monitors from entering polling sites.

Some news outlets were already calling the Florida Senate race between Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Val Demings a done deal, with incumbent Rubio ahead by a wide margin at midnight.

The contests with the highest stakes are in key presidential battleground states: GEORGIA, PENNSYLVANIA, OHIO, WISCONSIN, ARIZONA, MICHIGAN, NEVADA and NEW HAMPSHIRE, where Republicans still question or deny the results of the 2020 election, Trump’s “Big Lie, while running against Democrats who are incumbents or have defended their states’ voting procedures.

Nevada

Morning saw a break in a major snowstorm in northern Nevada, where Washoe County could be decisive in the state’s competitive races for Senate and governor. Voters in Reno hurried inside an old strip mall tucked behind two large casinos to escape freezing temperatures and line up at the polls. The storm was expected to pick up again in the afternoon, which could affect voter turnout.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat who is seen as vulnerable, is being challenged by Adam Laxalt, a former attorney general who helped lead former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn Nevada’s presidential election results in 2020. Laxalt was leading the race by a small margin Tuesday night, but the outstanding votes not yet counted were expected to change that since they were coming from more urban, suburban areas with more voters that tend to favor Democrats.

This is one of the top four states to watch, and will prove crucial to either side’s claims of a victorious election, and could provide the deciding vote in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate.

Ohio

The stakes of the Senate race in Ohio go beyond whether Representative Tim Ryan can somehow upset J.D. Vance in a state that has gone red over the last decade. The outcome matters. But so does the margin.

Many Democrats are pointing to Mr. Ryan’s surprisingly vigorous run as a blueprint for how their party can win back working-class voters in America’s industrial heartland. That argument will gain steam if he defeats Vance, a Marine veteran and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” who has become a Trump acolyte, or even if he just keeps it close.

But if Ryan loses by the same 8- or 10-percentage point margin that Democrats have been unable to close in Ohio in recent elections, the post-mortem debates within the party could get messy — especially if Ryan underperforms recent history. That could provide fodder for those who say that chasing Trump voters is a lost cause, and the Democratic Party’s future lies elsewhere.

“He ran the kind of race I think Democrats should be running in any working-class state or district,” said Mike Lux, a longtime Democratic strategist. “If he outperforms Biden in a year with this kind of headwinds, it will be an important signal to the party that winning more of the working-class vote is possible.”

A former high school quarterback who speaks in the lunch-bucket vernacular of the industrial Mahoning Valley, Ryan has forced Republicans to divert millions of dollars from other states to shore up Vance’s anemic campaign.

National Democrats, meanwhile, have focused on defending vulnerable incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire, leaving Ryan to face Vance largely alone.

New Hampshire

Senator Maggie Hassan, a first-term Democrat who won narrowly in 2016 but has been saddled with low job approval numbers, is facing Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who ran on a hard-right platform. As of press time, however, Hassan was leading by a comfortable margin.

North Carolina

Cheri Beasley, a Democrat and former State Supreme Court chief justice, has been in a statistical polling tie for months with Representative Ted Budd, the conservative Republican hoping to keep the seat of the retiring Senator Richard Burr in his party’s column.

As of press time, Budd, a Trump-endorsed Republican, was leading by a 3 point margin, although some news organizations were already calling this race for Budd.

Texas

In Texas, there were a few reports of poll workers wearing partisan attire.

Republican Governor Greg Abbott faces a challenge from Democrat Beto O’Rourke are facing off, with Abbott seeking a third term and O’Rourke trying to become the first Democrat to lead Texas in more than 25 years. But the election was called early since the Republican was ahead by nearly nine points, 55-44 percent of the vote.

Maryland, Virginia and D.C.

As the Washington region turns out to cast ballots in the 2022 midterms, many voters are attaching existential consequences to their votes, according to The Washington Post.

“It is an attitude that reflects the mood nationwide, with Republicans and Democrats warning that disaster could unfold should the other party triumph,” the paper reports. “Control of Congress is at stake as voters head to polls.”

Virginia

Some of the tightest congressional races in the country will be decided here.

Congresswoman Elaine Luria, the Democrat who got famous for leading one of the final hearings of the House Select investigating the insurrection and sedition on Jan. 6, 2021, is running for reelection in the Virginia Beach-anchored 2nd District against Republican state Senator Jen A. Kiggans.

This race was called on Election Night, since Luria — a native of Birmingham, Alabama — was behind by four percentage points, 52-48 percent of the vote.

In the Northern Virginia-based District 10, the incumbent Democrat Jennifer Wexton is being challenged by Republican Hung Cao. It appears Wexton will hold the seat, leading by about 52 to 47 percent.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger was defending her seat in Virginia’s District 7, facing a challenge from Hispanic Republican Yesli Vega, who tried to play to Trump card and stumbled. At press time, Spanberger was leading 52-48 percent.

Maryland

Maryland has its own congressional battle in District 5, where business executive and the Democrat David Trone faces a rematch with Neil Parrott, a Republican from Washington running a Trump-tinged campaign, in a western Maryland district redrawn to be highly competitive. At press time with 73 percent of the votes counted and reported, the Republican was leading 51 percent to 49 percent.

Maryland voters will be deciding Republican Larry Hogan’s successor as governor. Polls show Democrat Wes Moore has a lead of more than 30 percentage points over Republican Dan Cox. If Moore wins, he will become the state’s first Black governor.

The state attorney general and comptroller are also before voters, as is Question 4, which would make recreational marijuana legal for adults.

Local election officials warned that it will take days or weeks for all ballots to be counted in Maryland, including mail in ballots, possibly delaying some results.

My Experience

As many of my close followers know, this was my first time voting in Maryland as a legal resident. I got to vote for Senator Chris Van Hollen, a great Democrat who helped Senator Doug Jones of Alabama get elected in the special election of 2017, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, second in command to House Speaker Nanci Pelosi, who helped me secure a tour of the White House a few years back.

School was out in Prince George’s County, where I voted in a school, not a church like many voting places in Alabama.

Not only was there no line to wait in, I parked just a few spaces from the door and was in and out in a matter of minutes, so I interviewed some of the nice folks volunteering to facilitate voting and those promoting some local issues and candidates.

Here’s a short video with clips from the four interviews I conducted outside the voting place in Prince George’s County

Midterm Elections 2022 – Maryland – 720WebShareName

___

___

If you support truth in reporting with no paywall, and fearless writing with no popup ads or sponsored content, consider making a contribution today with GoFundMe or Patreon or PayPal.