Proponents of expanded voting by mail during the pandemic won victories Monday in three states, two of them solid blue but one of them reliably red.
The top elections official in Alabama, a Republican, decreed that fear of the coronavirus would be reason enough to vote absentee for president this year. Vermont joined the handful of states that have decided to send return-by-mail ballots to all voters for the general election. And Connecticut's plans to open mail voting to everyone in next month's primary survived a GOP lawsuit.
The various decisions come as policymakers and courts across the country continue to deliberate proposals for separating Covid-19 from the voting booth — a problem that remains intense now that it's clear the nation's public health crisis will continue way beyond November.
Here are the details:
Alabama
GOP Secretary of State John Merrill went against the wishes of President Trump, who opposes expanded mail voting by saying without evidence that election fraud is a sure consequence. The state normally has strict excuse requirements to vote absentee, but Merrill expanded them for this month's primary runoff to include fear of Covid-19, which is surging in the state — and has now extended that decision until November.
"Amid coronavirus concerns, it is important to remember that Alabamians who are concerned about contracting or spreading an illness have the opportunity to avoid the polls on Election Day by casting an absentee ballot," he said.
Merrill's expansion of absentee balloting, which won praise from Democrats in Montgomery, salves the sting that voting rights groups in the state had suffered at the hands of the Supreme Court three weeks ago. The justices voted 5-4 to block a lower court order easing other mail voting restrictions that are complicated at any time — but especially during a public health crisis.
At least through municipal elections next month, the two rules that Judge Abdul Kallon of Birmingham had struck down will remain in force: A copy of a photo ID must be part of a voter's application for a ballot, and an affidavit signed by a notary public or two adult witnesses must accompany the ballot itself.
Vermont
The nation's smallest reliably Democratic state said it would mail a general election ballot to every active, registered voter starting Sept. 18, more than six weeks before Election Day.
Other than the five states that had planned to conduct all their elections by mail even before the pandemic, California appears to be the only other state that has adapted this aggressively to the ever-changing nature of the Covid-19 emergency.
Vermont's General Assembly earlier voted to give state officials the leeway to change election procedures. The details, announced by Secretary of State Jim Condos, will also allow for outdoor polling places as well as drive-through polling stations for the Aug. 11 primary and the November general election.
Town clerks will also be permitted to begin processing ballots a month ahead of time, to avoid delays and confusion by waiting until the election is over. Although no excuse has been required to vote by mail in the state in the past, only about 10 percent of Vermoters did so, so the rush of envelopes this fall will be unexpected.
Earlier this month the state sent postcards to all voters so they could request a mail-in ballot for the Aug. 11 primary — and a quarter of them have already done so.
Connecticut
The state Supreme Court cleared the way for widespread mail voting in the primary, also Aug. 11, by dismissing a lawsuit from four Republican congressional candidates who said Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont had exceeded his power by relaxing the state's very strict absentee ballot excuse requirements.
Chief Justice Richard Robinson, sitting alone, dismissed the case on procedural grounds. He did not rule directly on the question of whether only the Legislature may alter the rules for getting a mail ballot. Lamont in May had issued an executive order expanding — but only for the primary — the list of available reasons to include risk of Civic-19 exposure. The candidates said that amounted to a decision to "impose effectively no-excuse absentee voting."
Secretary of State Denise Merrill has already received 200,000 requests for absentee ballot applications — meaning from about one-sixth of the state's voters.
The candidates, two each running in two House districts, say they are part of a group called Fight Voter Fraud, which takes Trump's position that widespread absentee voting puts the reliability of elections at risk.
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.