WASHINGTON — Despite fears of widespread intimidation or disruptions at polling places, voting for a vast majority of Americans proceeded smoothly on Tuesday, with sporadic reports of robocalls, text messages and some live calls meant to confuse and deter voters, or scattered incidents, but few major problems.
“It’s definitely a relief so far,” said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst with the Department of Homeland Security who focuses on domestic terrorism. But he warned that “the period after the election is going to be more volatile and higher risk because you’re going to be dealing with the aftermath of the election results.”
By early evening, most of the complaints around the country concerning intimidation centered on robocalls made to voters relaying false information. The Election Protection Hotline said it received reports of robocalls from 17 states discouraging voting.
The Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, said in a tweet that callers were directing voters to delay going to the polls to avoid long lines. “Obviously this is FALSE and an effort to suppress the vote. No long lines and today is the last day to vote,” Ms. Nessel said. “Don’t believe the lies! Have your voice heard!”
The robocall complaint came on top of live calls to voters in Michigan that threatened voters in Flint and Grand Rapids with arrests if they showed up to the polls, and a text message sent to voters in Dearborn that warned of ballot “sensor” malfunctions in the voting precincts. The message, which the state attorney general’s office is investigating, told voters that if they wanted their vote for their preferred presidential candidate to count, they actually had to mark the ballot for the other candidate.
The F.B.I. also confirmed the robocalls.
“As a reminder, the F.B.I. encourages the American public to verify any election and voting information they may receive through their local election officials,” the agency said in a statement.
In Michigan, voters also started receiving disturbing, typo-filled text messages that claimed to come from the F.B.I.
The messages, which were sent to voters in Dearborn — which has the largest concentration of Muslims per capita in the United States — read, “Urgent alert: Due to a typographical error, scantron ballots being used for the 2020 election has swapped sensors. If you are intending on voting for Joe Biden you must bubble in Trump and vice verse. — Federal Berue of Investigation.”
A spokeswoman for the Michigan attorney general’s office said officials were still trying to track down the sender. The office sent out an urgent alert on Facebook and Twitter to make sure voters in Dearborn did not fall for the scam.
In Virginia, Kristen Clarke, the president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said robocalls went out warning voters that they might get sick if they went out to vote. “Stay home and stay safe,” the calls said.
The robocalls were similar to those reported in Michigan, Texas, California, Florida, Kansas, Ohio, Washington, Georgia, New York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Zignal Labs, a media analytics firm, tracked more than 14,248 mentions of robocalls on social media on Tuesday, the vast majority of them in Michigan, Kansas and Florida.
The “stay home and stay safe” robocalls had started during the campaign and were continuing during voting, Ms. Clarke said. Voting rights groups said voters in several other states had gotten similar calls directing them to vote on Wednesday, Ms. Clarke said.
All told, more than three million calls were made to some 800,000 people across the country on Tuesday, instructing them to “stay safe and stay home,” according to data provided by the firm TelTech.
A senior homeland security official said such robocalls were common during elections and intelligence officials said there did not seem to be any early indications that the calls were originating from a foreign government. But Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the director of the National Security Agency, said that his agency would “take a very close look” at the calls, and said that he was confident the F.B.I. was “on top of it right now.”
Homeland security intelligence warned last month that extremists could look to target “physical election infrastructure” like polling sites. Federal officials and local police officials on Tuesday continued to prepare for possible unrest going into election night, with the Homeland Security Department deploying tactical agents from Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, throughout the United States to protect federal property. A new fence had been erected in front of Lafayette Square, near the White House.
The agents deployed by the Homeland Security Department are directed to guard federal buildings, not conduct immigration enforcement. Such homeland security tactical teams were also the subject of a report issued by the homeland security inspector general on Tuesday that said the agency had sent the teams to quell protests in Portland, Ore., without the proper authority or training. The Homeland Security Department disputed the finding.
During a news briefing focused on cyberthreats, Christopher Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, encouraged Americans to be patient through Election Day. “Keep calm, vote on, and then after today keep calm and let them count,” Mr. Krebs said.
Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel who is helping to lead the Biden campaign’s election protection efforts, said that the campaign was seeing “minimal issues and disruptions” around voting, and that “by and large, voting is proceeding smoothly.”
Still, a few random acts of violence or intimidation did pop up. In Chicago, a man told the police that a group had clubbed his car with baseball bats as he drove near a polling site, according to Sally Brown, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department.
Election 2020 ›
How to Follow the Election Results
Here’s a guide to The Times’s election night coverage, no matter when, how or how often you want to consume it.
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- If you just want results... There will be a results map on The Times’s home page, and yes, the infamous needle will be back — but only for Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, the only states providing granular enough information for our experts to make educated projections of uncounted votes.
- If you want constant updates... Times reporters are live-blogging all day and night. This will be your one-stop shop for minute-by-minute updates: race calls, on-the-ground reporting from swing states, news about any voting issues or disruptions, and more.
- If you want to check in every so often... Times journalists are also producing a live briefing from roughly 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. ET, with an overview of what’s happening in the presidential race, the Senate and House races, and the voting process itself.
An armed man wearing a Trump hat, combat boots and a visible sidearm was arrested upon returning to a North Carolina polling place after being barred earlier in the day, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
The police identified the man as Justin Dunn, 36. They said in a statement that he voted at the site but “continued to loiter” afterward, prompting a call to the police “regarding Dunn possibly intimidating other voters.”
The staff at a museum in Kansas City, Mo., moved to cover up a spray-painted message reading “Don’t Vote.”
In Dallas County, Texas, a dispute over masks forced a Democratic election judge and several voters to leave a precinct out of concern for their health.
Just as voting was set to begin on Tuesday, Beth Biesel, a Republican election judge, told her Democratic counterpart, Lynn Dickinson, that she and her appointed poll workers refused to wear masks. In Texas, two election judges are appointed to each polling site — a presiding election judge by the majority party and the alternate judge by the minority — to set up polls and ensure the security of the ballots.
Ms. Biesel previously joined a Texas activist in filing a lawsuit last month challenging Dallas County’s mask requirement for poll workers. The Texas Supreme Court denied their request.
On Tuesday, Ms. Biesel showed up without a mask anyway, in what Ms. Dickinson and one nonpartisan poll watcher described as a political statement.
“This was a small crowded room with a poll judge and poll workers who were aggressively getting in people’s faces and not wearing masks,” said Joanna Grossman, a nonpartisan Dallas County poll watcher. “It was very much a staged event. Unfortunately, they were not there to process voters.”
Despite the relative calm during voting, law enforcement officials across the nation nonetheless remained on high alert on Tuesday. Election Day came after a weekend in which caravans blocked roadways and there was an increase in threats made online and at the close of a bitterly divisive election.
Retailers and banks from Boston to Washington to Los Angeles searched for beefed-up security. Disney and Saks Fifth Avenue were among the brand-name stores in Manhattan that boarded up their windows. And Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills was closed for Election Day and the day after.
Julian Barnes and Hailey Fuchs contributed reporting from Washington, Kathleen Gray from Detroit, Danny Hakim from Raleigh, N.C., and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.
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