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

admin — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 05:48:00 +0000

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 Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

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.

Published – September 18, 2026 11:18 am IST

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Zero chance Biden will withdraw from U.S. Presidential race: White House

admin — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 16:05:58 +0000

U.S. President Joe Biden claps hands next to U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris while hosting a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 10, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Joe Biden is “absolutely not” pulling out of the U.S. presidential race, his spokeswoman said on July 3, as pressure mounted following his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

Panic has gripped his Democratic Party in the wake of last week’s TV debate, and internal rumblings about finding a replacement candidate before November’s election have been amplified by polls showing Mr. Trump extending his lead.

The New York Times and CNN reported that Mr. Biden, 81, had acknowledged to a key ally that his reelection bid was on the line if he failed to quickly reassure the public that he was still up to the job.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre rejected those reports outright, insisting Mr. Biden has no intention of withdrawing.

“The President is clear-eyed and he is staying in the race,” she told reporters.

Mr. Biden told a call with campaign and party staffers that he is going nowhere.

“I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win because when Democrats unite, we will always win. Just as we beat Donald Trump in 2020, we’re going to beat him again in 2024,” he said, according to a source close to the campaign.

He repeated that message in an emergency meeting with Democratic governors, who pledged their continued support, attendees said afterward.

“As the President continued to tell us, and show us, that he was all in… we said that we would stand with him,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore, seen as a rising star and potential future presidential candidate, told reporters alongside Minnesota’s Tim Walz and Kathy Hochul of New York.

Mr. Walz said Mr. Biden was “fit to serve.”

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who also attended the meeting at the White House and is seen as one of the top picks to replace Mr. Biden if he should drop out, said on social media platform X that “he is in it to win it and I support him.”

Mr. Biden has admitted he performed poorly in the debate, and was blunt in a radio interview recorded Wednesday with Wisconsin’s Civic Media.

“I screwed up. I made a mistake. That’s 90 minutes on stage. Look at what I’ve done in 3.5 years,” he said.

He echoed that sentiment in an interview with Pennsylvania’s WURD radio on Thursday, saying “I had a bad debate.”

Aftermath

The Biden campaign has been desperate to reassure Democratic donors and voters that the president’s performance against Trump was a one-off.

But party figures have voiced bafflement over what they see as deflection and excuses from the President and his aides.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, told the New York Times that Biden should withdraw.

“Mr. Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Mr. Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” he said in an email to the paper.

The concern was compounded by a New York Times poll conducted after the debate that showed Trump with his biggest lead ever over Mr. Biden — 49% to 43% of likely voters.

It wasn’t until Wednesday — six days after the debate — that Mr. Biden completed a round of calls with Democratic congressional leaders, and staffers have also voiced consternation over the glacial pace of the outreach.

“We are getting to the point where it may not have been the debate that did him in, but the aftermath of how they’ve handled it,” a senior Democratic operative told Washington political outlet Axios.

Mr. Biden may be tested on his ability to think on his feet when he sits with ABC News on Friday for his first television interview since the debate, and he will also hit the swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the coming days.

‘More worrisome’

The President has cited fatigue as a new explanation for his poor debate showing, saying that he was unwise to travel “around the world a couple times” before the debate.

But he had been back in the United States for nearly two weeks and spent two days relaxing and six days preparing before the debate.

Democratic lawmakers have begun to go public with their doubts. Arizona congressman Raul Grijalva became the second sitting Democrat to call on Mr. Biden to drop out.

“If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him, but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere,” Grijalva said, according to the Times.

In the street where the president grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, there was sympathy for Mr. Biden — but no campaign signs for either candidate.

“I was embarrassed for him. I felt he didn’t feel well and he probably shouldn’t have gone on the stage,” said 73-year-old Jamie Hayes.

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