Georgia has decided to fight a federal court ruling that ballots postmarked by Election Day must be counted even if they're delayed in the mail as long as three days.
A final decision on the appeal, assuming it comes by the election in eight weeks, will determine the fate of tens of thousands of votes — which could be decisive in a collection of high-profile close races, starting with the tossup contest for Georgia's potentially decisive 16 electoral votes.
The state is among 33, including half a dozen other presidential battlegrounds, where mailed ballots are normally valid only if they arrive to be counted by the time the polls close. But a week ago Judge Eleanor Ross of Atlanta sided with voting rights groups that argue those laws, if applied during a pandemic where a surge in remote voting is sure to put extraordinary strain on the Postal Service, will unconstitutionally disenfranchise a small but pivotal bloc of the national electorate.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the weekend asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to block Ross' ruling, mainly on the grounds that it was wrong for courts to change the rules so close to an election — an argument that has been persuasive to other federal appeals courts, including the Supreme Court in several cases this year.
The pandemic does not justify such judicial intervention just weeks before absentee ballots are to be delivered, Raffensperger argued, and it will cause confusion for voters and delays for election officials. State law says the final result must be certified 17 days after Election Day, even as people who forget to sign their ballot envelopes or have indecipherable handwriting are given a chance at a do-over.
While she is "reluctant to interfere with Georgia's statutory election machinery," Ross wrote, such action is justified "where the risk of disenfranchisement is great, as is the case here."
A record 1.1 million Georgians voted by mail in the June primary, almost half the total vote. And 1 percent of the ballots were rejected, according to the state, seven out of eight of them because they were received at county election offices after the polls closed. But voting rights groups say the 8,500 that were "too late to count" is a significant understatement because many counties did not calculate their numbers completely. Two years ago, 3 percent of absentee ballots were rejected.
Statewide turnout this fall is likely to crest 5 million, and a comparable share may vote absentee in order to avoid risk of exposure to Covid-19 at a polling place. (The state has allowed no-excuse absentee voting for 15 years.)
The lawsuit at issue was filed by the New Geogia Project, a voter registration organization, which estimates at 60,000 the number of ballots likely to be received after Election Day. In the state's governor's race two years ago, Republican Brian Kemp's margin of victory over Democrat Stacey Abrams was 55,000 votes.
Bill Clinton in 1992 was the last Democrat to carry the state, and Donald Trump won it last time by 5 points. But polling since May has shown Joe Biden in a statistical tie with the president. In addition, in a highly unusual situation both GOP-held Senate seats are on the ballot this fall and have both become highly competitive, as have a pair of House contests in the Atlanta area.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.