This is the last editor’s letter we plan to publish prior to Nov. 5, Election Day in the United States. If you have been feeling apprehensive, you are not alone. When asked recently, barely half of Americans said they were confident that their vote would be accurately counted. It is no wonder, given the rhetorical and physical attacks on our democracy these last few years, that many voters share the same fear. For our new cover story, we asked Barton Gellman, a former TIME editor-at-large and Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter, for his answer to a simple question: Is your vote safe?
Gellman, who today works at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, finds that though there are foreign and domestic actors who are trying to undermine the credibility of the vote in 2024, Americans can be confident that their ballots will be accurately counted and that the election will be free and fair. “[The] arc of the evidence, based on interviews with state, local, and federal election officials, intelligence analysts, and expert observers, bends toward confidence. Since 2020, the nation’s electoral apparatus has upgraded its equipment, tightened its procedures, improved its audits, and hardened its defenses against subversion by bad actors, foreign or domestic.…” he writes. “The system, according to everyone I asked, will hold up.”
We publish this reporting in the spirit of the rest of our coverage of this campaign, aiming to provide trusted guidance so that you can better understand the candidates and the policies they would implement. Last month, we launched TIME Votes, our initiative dedicated to giving readers service-oriented stories that provide context for this election cycle as well as accessible, non-partisan resources for voters. In the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more of that information with readers wherever they find TIME today. We hope this effort is useful to you as you prepare to vote. We also have worked to lift up those who are making the U.S. election safe and reliable, launching our Democracy Defenders series.
This has been one of the wildest election campaigns in history. A look back at TIME’s cover stories from 2024 shows the path that has taken us to this point. In March, President Joe Biden was stuck in his tracks with more than 30 pollsters, strategists, and campaign veterans telling TIME they believed Biden would lose. In April and June, we offered two companion interviews, the latter with Biden at the White House, the former with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, asking each to explain what the world would look like if they were elected. This summer witnessed Biden freezing at the debate, Trump surviving an assassination attempt at a rally, and then Biden’s eventual decision to step aside from the campaign, leading to Kamala Harris’ moment.
The Vice President locked up her party’s nomination with a speed and force few predicted. This fall, we watched Harris outperform Trump at their only debate—a moment that Democrats now fear could have been the apex of her campaign—and the emergence of J.D. Vance as the face of the New Right. Still, despite all this tumult, if the polling is accurate, the fundamental dynamics of the race appear to have stayed remarkably static, with Harris and Trump effectively tied in the battleground states that will likely decide the election.
Covering all of this has been our indefatigable team of experienced reporters and editors in Washington, D.C.; New York City; and around the world. We are in their debt and are privileged to report on this election for you. Here’s to a safe and secure vote, and to our grand exercise in democracy.
