Early voting begins in U.S. midterm elections that could flip control of Congress

In-person voting for this year’s midterm elections begins on Friday (September 18, 2026), ushering in the final six weeks for Americans to decide who they trust to lead Congress through a cost-of-living crisis, a prolonged war in Iran, and other pressing issues.

Election administrators say they’re prepared and confident the vote will be accurate and secure. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump has continued with efforts to denigrate certain voting methods and reshape how U.S. elections are run, through court challenges, an expansive federal hunt for non-citizen voters and a pressure campaign to force election officials to share sensitive voter data.

Friday (September 18, 2026) marks the start of early voting in Virginia. Voters in a handful of other states, including Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota, are able to cast absentee ballots in person, typically at a local election office or voting centre. More expansive early voting is scheduled to begin in those and other states in the coming weeks.

The November 3 election includes votes for governor and state legislature in most states and will determine whether the U.S. House and Senate maintain their Republican majorities.

If Democrats retake Congress, it will alter the trajectory of the final two years of Mr. Trump’s term, likely leading to investigations and other oversight efforts.

The start of early voting comes at a time of deep angst among many Americans about issues including rising gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran, the looming risks of artificial intelligence technology, and Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

It also follows an unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House that began when Mr. Trump urged the Republican-controlled legislature in Texas to redraw its congressional map to help the party. California and other states followed.

The changes affect millions of people: Research shows 1 in 10 Americans this fall are residents of a different congressional district than in 2024.

Those partisan efforts are expected to continue ahead of the 2028 elections after a landmark ruling earlier this year from the Supreme Court weakened the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections against racially discriminatory redistricting.

As the start of early voting approached, Mr. Trump was focused on efforts to assert federal control over election administration, even as the Constitution bestows the power to run elections on the states and, in some cases, Congress.

The Supreme Court rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots this week, but several of his administration’s other efforts to influence the voting process and mine state voter lists for illegitimate voters are ongoing.

Mr. Trump for years has raised the spectre of widespread non-citizen voting in U.S. elections, and this year is no exception. But despite his administration’s insistence that hundreds of thousands of people are illegally on voting rolls across the country, research continues to show noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.

David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the president continues “his disinformation campaign and his attack on election officials”. But he said he thinks despite that and other challenges, “ultimately the process will hold as it has in past years”. Voting rights advocates have encouraged voters this year to cast mail ballots early, in part because of concerns about recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations that could delay the application of postmarks to ballots.

“Voting early, whether in person or by mail, is good for all of our communities because it gives voters options, eases lines on Election Day and can even mean faster results,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and CEO of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local.

In a press briefing on Thursday (September 17, 2026), Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon urged people not to be swayed by stories they might have seen or read that cast doubt on election operations. They would be able to vote “just like they always have”, he said.

“I just want to reaffirm that Minnesota’s elections are fundamentally free, fair, accurate, honest and secure,” he said.