How do you vote in the United States?

The United States is holding its midterm elections this Tuesday, as problems with voting machines in key Maricopa County (Arizona) have raised the specter of doubts about the process that actually took place in the 2020 presidential election, encouraged by former President Donald Trump. .

EFE visited the voting center installed in the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. Memorial Library in Washington, DC for details of the voting process.

The first step that voters must take is to identify themselves and verify their residence address, as well as sign the register.

After identification, voters have a receipt with a barcode that they must scan to obtain an electronic or physical ballot.

Both electronic voting and physical voting, once filled, must be checked by a machine that will count your vote at the end of the process, although at some polling stations electronic ballots will run out at just over five in the afternoon (22:00 GMT).).

There is also a way for those people who are not registered in the system to get a special ballot, where they have to fill out part of a form with the electoral official and can only access paper voting and not electronic voting.

After voting ends, Americans can pick up “I voted” posters before leaving the stations to show their commitment to the nation’s election.

During Tuesday, there were almost no incidents in the US, although there were problems in Maricopa, the second largest US constituency, with voting machines in some centers.

The Maricopa Elections Department, which has 233 voting points, announced Tuesday that 10% of centers have problems with voting machines.

At a subsequent press conference, county election officials raised the number to 20%, which would be about 40 polling stations.

However, the authorities stressed that voters can deposit their ballot papers in a safe box and they will be counted later.

Maricopa was already the center of controversy in the 2020 presidential election, in which Democrat Joe Biden won Trump by 45,000 votes, after a second recount and amid unfounded allegations of fraud in the second.

The former Republican president (2017-2021), who used his profile on his social network, TRUTH, throughout Tuesday to echo baseless complaints about the integrity of the electoral process, criticized Maricopa for being the focus of trouble once again.