More than 7,000 Ohioans were delayed or blocked in trying to get absentee ballots for last fall's local elections and ballot initiatives, entirely because of missing or unfamiliar signatures on their applications, The Associated Press reported Monday after analyzing records statewide.
Signature requirements, and the vagaries of matching the handwriting on file to the marks on a fresh form, are becoming a big issue as more and more places ease the rules early voting or otherwise conduct elections by mail.
Ohio, one of the nation's most populous electoral bellwethers, has allowed no-excuse absentee voting by mail since 2005, and another 33 states will do the same as of next year. The roster of states that conduct all elections by mail will grow to eight when Hawaii and Utah debut their systems in 2020. All those places say the idea is to boost turnout by making voting easier, but officials in the states with stricter rules say they're guarding against fraud.
At the center of the debate are signature rules and the subjective standards that officials — generally without any training as handwriting analysts — use to match the scratches on file with the squiggles on applications. Lawsuits are underway in Texas and Georgia after the American Civil Liberties Union won suits last year loosening the mail-in voting rules in California and New Hampshire.
After making public information requests to Ohio's 88 county boards of elections, the AP revealed that in almost a quarter of the counties (21), more than 6,500 absentee ballot applications were turned down flat because a signature was either missing or didn't match what was on file. Another five counties reported rejecting a combined 850 applications for other, unspecified reasons.
The records of just 12 counties showed no applications rejected because of signature issues. The rest, more than half the counties, said they had no records about the fate of rejected applications.
About one in six of Ohio's 8 million registered voters cast absentee ballots last year.
When he was a state legislator, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose promoted legislation allowing voters to apply for absentee ballots online, which would obviate the need for a handwritten signature. The bill is on the agenda for the GOP-majority General Assembly to debate early next year.
The current law says a request for an absentee ballot "need not be in any particular form," although it also lists a valid signature among eight or more pieces of information required, depending on the type of election. (The signature requirements for a completed absentee ballot are even more strict.)
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.