'Election Day Is Wednesday': FBI Gives Voters Wrong Date While Promising to Protect Midterms, Slammed for Misinformation

Hours before polls opened for the US midterm elections, the FBI's New Haven field office told voters the wrong date for Election Day in a post promoting the bureau's work to protect the vote.

'Election day is Wednesday and the #FBI is working around the clock to ensure the midterms are safe,' the account wrote on X at about 4:00 p.m. ET on Monday, 2 November, roughly 14 hours before Connecticut's polling places opened.

Election Day is Tuesday, 3 November. Federal law fixes the general election on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and Connecticut polls are open from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., according to the office of Governor Ned Lamont.

The rest of the post promoted a radio interview in which Special Agent in Charge P.J. O'Brien and Public Affairs Specialist Christine Jeltema discussed how the FBI guards against threats, voter intimidation, and ballot fraud. The segment aired on Melissa in the Morning, a programme on Connecticut station WICC.

Community Note and Misinformation Claims Follow FBI Post

By late Monday, X users had attached a Community Note stating that Election Day falls on Tuesday, 3 November. Its second line read: 'Not Wednesday'.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, formerly of The Intercept, shared the post at 11:33 p.m. ET. 'Why is the FBI falsely telling people that the election is on Wednesday?' he wrote.

As of about 2:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the FBI post had more than 257,000 views and had not been deleted or edited. Klippenstein's post had drawn more than 10,000 likes.

The bureau's own public guidance on election crimes warns that bad actors may mislead voters about the time, manner, or place of voting, including through 'inaccurate election dates'. The same page states, 'For general elections, Election Day is always the first Tuesday after November 1.'

Court Fight Over Federal Monitors at the Polls

The New Haven Post reported that Washington was contesting the federal government's role at polling places.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 15 September, FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau had election crimes coordinators in every field office and that agents would be 'manning the posts for election interference.' Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Patel had failed to give 'an unequivocal, clear, unambiguous commitment' that the FBI would stay out of election interference.

On 28 October, the Justice Department told a federal court in Washington, in one of several NAACP cases over its monitoring programme, that FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff would not serve as monitors. A declaration from Eric Neff, acting chief of the Civil Rights Division's Voting Section, said monitors would come from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and would not carry firearms.

In a separate suit filed on 16 October, the NAACP is seeking to stop the department from using prosecutors and law enforcement personnel as monitors, arguing the practice amounts to voter intimidation. On Sunday, the group asked Senior US District Judge Reggie Walton for an emergency order.

At a hearing on Monday, department lawyer Kathryn Barragan said the government had 'no problem' with an order requiring reasonable efforts to exclude sworn officers. She put the number of monitors at around 900. Walton warned that if the department had misstated who the monitors were, 'there's going to be hell to pay for that.'

On Tuesday, Walton rejected the NAACP's bid to limit whom the department can send as monitors.

New Haven Braces for Federal Election Monitors

New Haven, home to the FBI field office, is the only Connecticut municipality the Justice Department plans to monitor on Election Day, according to the Connecticut Secretary of the State's office. Two teams of two will check sites covered by federal Spanish-language assistance rules, state officials said.

Mayor Justin Elicker said posting federal monitors at polling places 'would be counterproductive'. Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas said, 'DOJ monitors may observe from outside the 75-foot restricted area.'

'Nothing about the presence of federal monitors changes your right to vote,' Thomas said.