By Catalina Clarke
Election Day Poll Watch — early evening update. Catalina Clarke is Editor-in-Chief of The Library Media. This desk is monitoring polling-place conditions across the country today and will update through the close of polls.
What has changed since the early afternoon edition. Polls have now closed across the East and most of the Central time zone, and voting is ending in the Mountain states. Two late developments complete the day’s threat record. In Toledo, Ohio, the polling place emptied by bomb threats this morning will stay open until 9:15 PM Eastern for provisional voting only — the latest closing of any single site in the East today. In Gibraltar, Michigan, the second polling place emptied by a bomb threat today has finished its story for the day: voting resumed inside at 6:30 PM Eastern, and police say a suspect has been identified. This edition also corrects the record of the series: the early afternoon edition, true at its 2:51 PM Pacific sweep, reported no bomb threat today outside the Toledo-area cluster. The Gibraltar threat, reported at 3:36 PM Pacific, superseded that line before the edition was published, and the corridor piece that followed carried it in full. Both threatened polling places sit about twenty-five miles apart, across the Ohio–Michigan line. Everything else on the standing list still holds at the latest sweep, at 5:51 PM Pacific: no ICE agents, armed federal agents, or troops at polling places.
Where polls have closed. Closings, in Eastern time, have run on the published schedule. At 6:00 PM, the Eastern-time parts of Indiana and Kentucky closed. At 7:00 PM, Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia closed, along with most of Florida and the remaining parts of Indiana and Kentucky. At 7:30 PM, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia closed, subject to the extensions below. At 8:00 PM, Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee closed, along with Washington, D.C., the Florida Panhandle, and most of Michigan, Texas, Kansas, and South Dakota. Arkansas closed at 8:30 PM. Closing at this hour, 9:00 PM Eastern, are Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, and the remaining parts of Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula. With the 9:00 PM closings, every state east of the Mississippi River is closed, except for the one Toledo site voting provisionally until 9:15 PM.
Toledo: open latest in the East, provisionally. Voting at Beverly Elementary School in Toledo will continue until 9:15 PM Eastern for provisional voting only, according to the Lucas County Board of Elections, with Dan Lusheck, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, confirming the provisional-only terms, reported by USA TODAY, the Columbus Dispatch, and the Akron Beacon Journal. Ohio polls otherwise closed at 7:30 PM. The extension follows this morning’s two bomb threats, called in at about 10:30 AM Eastern, which closed the polling place for one hour and fifteen minutes, according to Board Deputy Director Tim Monaco; a K-9 sweep found nothing, police cleared the site at about 12:15 PM, and voting resumed. The threats remain claimed threats: officials have not stated whether they were credible or hoaxes, who made them, or whether they are connected, and no attribution has been made. No injuries have been reported.
Gibraltar: resumed inside, a suspect identified. At Carlson High School in Gibraltar, Michigan — the polling location for Brownstown Township Precincts 8 and 11 — a bomb threat reported at about 3:30 PM Eastern evacuated the building and voting was moved outside, according to the Brownstown Township Police Department, reported by The Detroit News via Monroe News and by WDIV Local 4. Voting resumed inside at 6:30 PM Eastern after an evacuation of about an hour, according to the Detroit Free Press, citing the Brownstown Township Police Department. Brownstown Police Chief Jeff Watson said a suspect was identified, and that voting was paused only for the time of the move outside, the Free Press reported. Police continue to investigate. No further details about the suspect were disclosed in the reporting reviewed, no attribution beyond that identification has been made, and officials have not stated whether the threat was credible or a hoax, or whether it is connected to the Toledo threats. No injuries have been reported. Michigan polls otherwise closed at 8:00 PM Eastern, with the western Upper Peninsula closing at 9:00 PM.
The earlier extensions have now run out. The two extensions reported in the early afternoon edition have both elapsed. In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections’ five extended precincts — in Columbus, Hertford, Lenoir, and Wilson counties — closed between 7:45 and 8:15 PM Eastern; voters who arrived after the normal 7:30 PM close voted provisionally, and the board expected the state’s first unofficial results at about 8:15 PM. In Chester County, Pennsylvania, the three precincts extended by the Court of Common Pleas — 201, 210, and 244, at Easttown Library, St. John’s Presbyterian Church, and Goshen Baptist Church — closed at 8:30 PM Eastern; votes cast there after 8:00 PM were provisional. No other court-ordered extension has been reported in the record this desk is following.
What has not changed. The rest of the day’s picture stands as the earlier editions left it. In Fulton County, Georgia, voters received text messages about polling-location changes that the county says did not come from its election office; who sent them, how many voters received them, and whether any voter was misdirected remain unconfirmed. In Westchester County, New York, paper ballots from this morning’s failed scanners are held in sealed bags under state emergency procedures, and no poll-hour extension was indicated there. In Oklahoma County, ballots from precincts with machine problems are secured in locked bins to be counted Tuesday, and officials said voting never stopped. In Florida, flooding relocated more than twenty polling sites — weather, openly published by state officials — with flood moves also in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and San Juan County, Utah. The Justice Department’s roughly 1,000 monitors and observers remain in all 50 states, with no credible report of any monitor intimidating a voter. A record 57.5 million ballots were cast before today.
What has not happened. No ICE agents, armed federal agents, or federal troops have appeared at polling places — the latest sweep, at 5:51 PM Pacific, found no credible report of any of them, USA TODAY reported late Tuesday afternoon that armed federal authorities had not shown up at polls, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters he did not send ICE agents to polling sites. There is still no credible report of organized disruption anywhere in the country. This desk reports voting conditions, not results, and makes no race calls.
The night ahead. Closings continue west: at 10:00 PM Eastern, Montana, Nevada, and Utah, most of Idaho, and Oregon’s Malheur County; at 11:00 PM Eastern, California, Washington, the rest of Oregon, and northern Idaho; at midnight Eastern, Hawaii and most of Alaska; and last, at 1:00 AM Eastern Wednesday — 10:00 PM Pacific tonight — Alaska’s Aleutians. Anyone in line at a site’s closing time may still vote under the rules in place at that site. The next and final edition is the closing update. All 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats, and 36 governorships are being decided.
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