Early Voting Nears 50 Million as the Campaign for Congress Enters Its Final Weekend

The campaign for control of Congress has reached its final weekend with the electorate already half in. More than 49 million Americans have cast early ballots, in person or by mail, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab - nearing 50 million and already a record for a midterm election, up from nearly 46 million who voted before Election Day in the last midterms in 2022, Reuters reported Saturday. Texas is a large piece of that record: early voting here closed Friday at 6.9 million ballots statewide, a file this station published overnight.

What those ballots will decide is the whole federal legislature in miniature: 35 of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 House seats are on Tuesday's ballot, and the outcome will set the tone for the final two years of President Donald Trump's term, Reuters reported. A Democratic victory in one or both chambers could bring congressional investigations of an administration that has had largely compliant Republican majorities for two years. Trump himself is not scheduled to travel on Saturday - a day Reuters described as a mash-up of politics, Halloween and college football - and returns to the trail Sunday in Kansas and Iowa, the restored rallies this station covered this morning.

The administration's election litigation ran alongside the voting all week, and Reuters' final-weekend account ties the threads together. The Justice Department accelerated its criminal investigation in Alaska on Friday after reports that aides to Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola recruited a retired schoolteacher, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., to share a ballot name with Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan; U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman called him a 'sham candidate' but declined to say what crime may have been committed, and both Peltola and the retired teacher have denied any coordination. The department has also sued California over more than 20,000 ballots and roughly 30 states over unredacted voter rolls - and on Friday a federal judge ordered it to stop threatening California election officials, the ruling Harris County's own election workers are covered by and this station filed this morning.

For all the litigation, voters themselves report steadier nerves than the courtroom record might suggest. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted September 30 to October 5 found 76 percent of voters confident their ballots will be counted accurately, 15 percent not confident and the rest unsure - with confidence about equally high among Republicans and Democrats. Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice told Reuters the administration's court efforts are unlikely to win in court but could sow 'uncertainty, fear, distrust, chaos' around the count. Harris County's voters get their say on Tuesday, when vote centers open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.