Election Night 2026: Every Count, Every Call, Every Fight Over the Ballots

In Arabic, on hidden camera, she said only the presidential race was off-limits. Hours earlier the city’s mayor said some Dearborn precincts had run out of ballots.

Byron Donalds beat David Jolly to succeed Ron DeSantis. Three Black Americans had been elected governor before him. All three were Democrats.

The teen told him he hadn’t offered a single statistic. He got a middle finger and a backhand to the mouth, and never raised a hand. Police have identified the man. No charges yet.

The RNC put every county clerk on notice Tuesday over reports that voters who filled in the straight-party oval were told they couldn’t cross over in a single race. That’s exactly what Democrats backing Mike Rogers need to do.

About 20 target and preservation letters have gone out, and the DSCC got a grand jury subpoena, as Alaskans vote with two Dan Sullivans on the ballot. Elias calls it a sham. He still hasn’t said whether he helped recruit the second one.

Three orders in about 12 hours. A panel freed the Justice Department Monday evening, the full court undid it before midnight, and after polls opened Tuesday six judges put it back. DOJ can again ask states to set aside suspected noncitizen ballots and warn the people who count them.

Republican Tony Ada beat Therese Terlaje by 1,020 votes with all 59 precincts in, and Trump cheered the “early call.” Democrats took Guam’s seat in Congress, but the GOP kept a one-seat majority in the Legislature.

On Election Eve, the judge from Trump’s 2020 election case banned DOJ and DHS from handing states and counties their suspected noncitizen lists, on a $1 bond. Prosecutors say every accused noncitizen voter they’ve charged in California came off that list.

A voter’s wheelchair rolled over a power cord on Oct. 21, and the state warned that scanner’s memory cards may be corrupted. A second machine kept reporting a jam that wasn’t there. Fulton’s plan to fix it is dated Election Day, and the board votes tonight.

Ballots are going into orange bags in one of the closest House races in America. The county executive went from “no one should be panicked” to “debacle” in about an hour, and Mike Lawler is already in court over where they get counted.

A federal judge let the Justice Department’s monitors go to the polls today and held DOJ to its sworn promise: no guns, no badges, no arrest powers. The same day, Boasberg turned away Schumer and Jeffries for lack of standing.

Deep-blue Washington and Colorado vote on statewide bans on males in girls’ sports, while Arizona and Nebraska vote to make theirs tougher. The Supreme Court left the call to “the people.”

Minnesota’s election chief says the federal monitors “abided by all applicable laws and rules” in August. The Twin Cities are shutting them out again, and the state is sending lawyers to “monitor the monitors.”

In an election-eve video, the governor warned anyone who helps Trump that “California will come for you” and no pardon will save them. He left out a 136-year-old Supreme Court case from his own state, and whose hotline he was sending voters to.

Attorney General Todd Blanche calls it the largest surge of voter-fraud arrests since Trump returned. All but five of the accused hold green cards, and they come from more than 30 countries.

The justices didn’t even ask California to respond. The same day, Obama-appointed Chief Judge James Boasberg barred the Justice Department from demanding the state set those ballots aside. Prosecutions of noncitizen voters go on.

State records list Amber Lee as a director and secretary of 907 Initiative, which spent big on ads against the senator while she worked for the other Dan Sullivan. Two watchdogs have asked the FEC and the Justice Department to examine it. Lee and the group deny wrongdoing.

A Michigan judge struck down Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s rule ordering clerks to delete electronic poll books and blocked it for good, on the eve of the election in which she’s running for governor. Last week her office said the court “did not rule on the merits.”

On O’Keefe Media Group’s hidden camera, Matt Menard says the Texas Democrat is “offended by ICE” and “not going to the middle.” Williamson County’s Democratic chair adds: “We’ve gotta get elected.”

Federal prosecutors say all 34 people charged so far in Operation Protect the Vote were on the list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens they gave California. One allegedly voted as recently as June. Bill Essayli says the state already has the fix and won’t use it.

Three days after a Biden-appointed judge ordered the White House to take down its “$5,000 to Americans” video, Trump closed the midterm campaign at the reopened Reflecting Pool: win Tuesday, and every adult gets $5,000.

The county’s elections office blamed “storm related issues,” then edited it to “power related” nine minutes later. It came three days after Recorder Justin Heap’s office, which got its own dark vote centers back open fast, handed over the polls.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency application the day before Election Day, asking the justices to stop California from mixing the mail ballots of 20,000 suspected noncitizens into the count. He isn’t asking to throw out a single one.

FEC filings show the Senate Leadership Fund sent Texas PAC $75 million on Sept. 10 and $83 million on Sept. 24, each a day after an identical check from Elon Musk. Texas PAC has since put $181.9 million into the race for Ken Paxton and against James Talarico, whose campaign has outraised Paxton’s more than 6 to 1.

Two days before Michigan picks a senator, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed told CBS that Palestine has a right to exist. Asked the same about Israel, he answered, “Yes. If there is a shared understanding,” and said he would back one shared state if both peoples chose it.

In an election-eve interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, President Trump called Democratic talk of arresting Elon Musk and nationalizing SpaceX just talk, “but if it is talk, we’ll have to protect them.” Preemptive pardons like Biden’s? “I would if I needed to, sure.”

Sarah Palin says she ran for Congress in 2022 knowing she couldn’t win under Alaska’s ranked-choice system. Days after a New York Times report that Peltola-aligned operatives recruited a namesake to run against Sen. Dan Sullivan, she called it “another ‘I told you so,’” and Alaskans vote Tuesday on repealing the system.

El-Sayed’s campaign asked the Michigan congresswoman to stop showing up at its events. She went to church in Detroit with Rogers instead, then said: “I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.”

A citizen’s Oct. 27 tip led Texas investigators to felons who cast 2026 ballots while on parole, which state law forbids. Warrants came Oct. 30 and arrests followed. Paxton says more cases are under investigation but hasn’t said how many were arrested.

Citizens of Jamaica, Honduras and Trinidad and Tobago are charged with claiming to be Americans and voting for president. A year ago Tennessee sent the FBI 42 possible noncitizen voters. As of Oct. 19, nobody had been charged.

Rep. Jim Himes says Democrats, lawyers and nonprofits gamed out Musk using X to send armed men to Detroit polls. On the same show, Jamie Raskin called noncitizen voting “a non-issue.” DOJ had just indicted 18 more in North Carolina.

Stevens agreed to join him and Jim Clyburn at a Black church in Detroit, the city she won by 27,715 votes. El-Sayed answered that she was “relitigating a primary,” and his campaign told her to stay away.

Judge Jennifer Rochon ordered three White House videos, including Trump’s promise of $5,000 per adult if Republicans hold Congress, taken off government sites and MAGA Inc.’s airwaves. The request came from a union, its PAC and a voter.

The Ninth Circuit refused Friday night to rehear the case, leaving the injunction in place through Election Day. Judge Eric Tung and six colleagues dissented, saying the lower court “confused investigation for intimidation.”

A hidden camera caught the Michigan Democrat telling a stranger that Democrats already have their “signature cases” picked out, and that voters will see them “basically in January.”