Election Day 2026 live updates: DOJ election monitors to be dispatched across all 50 states

Speaking to reporters before casting his ballot in Columbus Tuesday morning, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy acknowledged challenges facing voters.

“It is a tough time. There's no doubt about it,” he said. “People are looking not just to make ends meet, but get ahead… This election, especially for the role of governor, just comes down to who's going to allow your family to live a better life.”

“I've been a candidate the whole time. But today, I was also wearing my hat as a voter. And as I think about every other voter who's checking that box next to my name, or frankly anything on that ballot, I want them to hold me, hold all of us on this ticket accountable to deliver for them,” Ramaswamy added after casting his ballot.

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Ramaswamy on Election Day: 'It's a tough time'Speaking to reporters before casting his ballot in Columbus Tuesday morning, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy acknowledged challenges facing voters.

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Ramaswamy did not directly discuss his opponent, Democrat Amy Acton.

-ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim and Diana Paulsen

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC news on Tuesday morning that he expects Democrats will win control of the Senate and he will be the next Senate majority leader.

Talking to reporters shortly after he voted in Brooklyn, Schumer described his mood as "nauseously optimistic." If Democrats regain the house majority, it would be "up to" Trump on whether to work with them, Schumer said.

"Look, it'll be up to him. The American people want us to do things that make their lives better. Trump has refused to listen to them," Schumer said. "He's even, at time to time, sort of dissed those costs, those kinds of things that people are caring about of costs and things like that. Will he change? I don't think I don't know. But we're going to fight Trump tooth and nail and focus on the issues no matter what he does."

Schumer previously served as majority leader between 2021 and 2025.

Asked whether Democrats would seek to work with the president or whether they would seek to hold him accountable, Schumer said that would in some ways be up to Trump.

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Schumer 'nauseously optimistic' Democrats will control SenateTalking to reporters shortly after he voted in Brooklyn, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described his mood as "nauseously optimistic."

ABCNews.com

"We'll see if he will actually change his ways and join," Schumer said. "But whether he does or not, because I don't think he will, we are going to keep fighting for the people and doing what they asked us to do. We're listening to them. Trump is not."

-ABC News' Jonathan Karl

An issue involving paper ballots is “preventing voting machines from accepting ballots" in Westchester County north of New York City Tuesday morning, state and local officials said early Tuesday.

Westchester is part of the 17th Congressional District, home to a high-profile House race in the Empire State between Republican incumbent Mike Lawler and Democratic challenger Cait Conley, and covers northern Westchester County.

The county election board said voters should remain in line and exercise patience, and assured residents that their vote would count. Voters are being asked to place paper ballots in orange bags, "which will remain secure and monitored,” officials said.

"These ballots will subsequently be counted in accordance with applicable election procedures,” the county said.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said the thickness of the paper ballots was making it difficult for the machines to read them. The state’s attorney general, Letitia James, said her office was monitoring the issue as local officials “work on a solution.”

-ABC News’ Jared Kofsky and Lucien Bruggeman

The Justice Department released Tuesday its list of jurisdictions where it plans to send election monitors, in what it is describing as the "largest" federal monitoring effort in history.

The department's statement says it will dispatch a total of roughly 1,000 monitors to all 50 states -- though in a court hearing Monday an official estimated the number was closer to 900, because the department was having initial difficulties identifying and training personnel for the effort in time for Election Day.

Election monitor deployments are a routine practice across administrations typically with staff from the DOJ Civil Rights Division's Voting Section, though the announcements have been subject to growing criticism from Democrats in recent months given the Trump administration's aggressive pursuit of voter data that they say is intended to ensure undocumented immigrants aren't registered to vote.

DOJ has also disclosed it is pulling in officials from outside agencies such as the Bureau of Prisons and the Drug Enforcement Administration to join the election monitoring effort, though an official assured a federal judge yesterday that all from those agencies would be "clerical" workers who are not authorized to carry guns as part of their daily work.

D.C. District judge Reggie Walton rejected an emergency effort yesterday to limit DOJ's election monitoring program that was brought by civil rights groups including the NAACP, after finding the groups failed to put forward sufficient evidence that the monitors would prove intimidating to voters.

-ABC News’ Alexander Mallin