Early vote surge hits 10 million as Alaska probe and Michigan feud heat up midterms
Voting is outpacing 2022 by wide margins in key states while legal and political battles intensify in Alaska and Michigan.
By Ricardo Alvarez ·
President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton stood on stages in Florida and Mississippi on Friday, both urging voters to cast ballots in the approaching midterm election. The campaign trail has become a central arena as millions of Americans decide which party will control Congress in the president's final two years in office.
An Associated Press analysis of voting data shows nearly 10 million more Americans have cast ballots five days before Election Day than at the same point in 2022. This surge is particularly sharp in states with competitive Senate races. In Iowa and Kansas, early voting is up roughly 30 percent. Trump plans to visit both states on Sunday to support his candidates there.
In Alaska, U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman confirmed on Friday that federal authorities are investigating a scheme to confuse voters. Law enforcement assets were sent to the state this week after reports indicated that Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola's campaign may have recruited Dan J. Sullivan to run against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. Peltola denied knowledge of the effort, while the Justice Department stated it wants to isolate ballots ranking the look-alike candidate to measure voter confusion.
Trump reversed his schedule on Friday after briefly suggesting he would hold fewer rallies. He rescheduled back-to-back events in Iowa and Kansas for Sunday. At his stop in Daytona, Florida, Trump told Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds that he thought the current rally was his last. He noted that 28 consecutive days of campaigning was a lot, before confirming the weekend trips.
Political friction also emerged in Michigan, where former Rep. Haley Stevens re-entered the public debate. Stevens said on CNN that she would vote for her primary opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, but urged him to repair relations with Jewish and Black voters. Her comments followed her fiancé's announcement that he would support Republican candidate Mike Rogers. Stevens later released a statement criticizing El-Sayed for not condemning an advertisement linking U.S. support for Israel to high grocery prices. She wrote that he could begin getting money out of politics by getting Israel out of his explanations for Michigan's costs.
El-Sayed responded by noting his victory over Stevens in August and urged the party to focus on defeating Rogers. Rogers praised Stevens for calling for the ad's denial and criticized El-Sayed's response on social media. In Texas, more than 6.3 million voters had cast early ballots as of Wednesday, a 50 percent increase over the same period four years ago. Early voting is also up more than 30 percent in Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Kansas, and up 83 percent in South Carolina.
