Chaos reigned Tuesday in all three states that pressed ahead with their Democratic presidential primaries in the face of the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic.
Legions of poll workers, who are mainly older people and therefore in greatest danger of Covid-19 infection, canceled at the last minute or failed to show up at voting locations in Florida, Illinois and Arizona.
Voters were caught off guard when they found their usual polling places shuttered because of health concerns. People in the three states were told where to head instead but people in Ohio were told all voting had been canceled for the day. And plenty of Americans with compromised immune systems decided to walk away rather than risk their health at voting sites they reported were not following basic hygiene standards.
"If it were not so tragic, it would be comical," said Ami Gandhi of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. His organization and a collection of other voting rights groups took stock of their reports from the field at midday.
The voting got started in the trio of states — with a combined 441 Democratic delegates at stake — just hours after President Trump sharply escalated efforts to contain the spread of the highly contagious and potentially deadly virus, telling Americans to stay away from groups of more than 10 people and avoid unnecessary trips away from home for the next 15 days.
Late Monday night, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said that such a "health emergency" permitted him to order polls that were to open at 6:30 a.m. statewide to stay closed all day — even though a judge had ruled a few hours before that the election must go on. With the fate of 136 delegates at stake, and a relatively close contest in the state between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the governor said he would work to get Democrats more time to vote. All this produced the greatest confusion and angst anywhere on Tuesday.
One positive was being pulled from all this catastrophe: The three states that went ahead had also allowed for periods of early voting — and each reported healthy numbers of people had already cast their ballots.
Still, there was solid evidence that turnout on the climactic day of the primaries was going to be significantly less than had been expected.
Here are more details about what has been happening Tuesday in the three states holding primaries and the one that canceled.
Florida
Several polling places in Palm Beach did not open at all Tuesday morning because there were no officials there to unlock the equipment.
Elizabeth McClenaghan, chairwoman of the board of the state's Common Cause chapter, said some facilities where seniors live that were supposed to be voting sites chose on their own to opt out even though they were not covered by state bans on visitations to nursing facilities.
In addition, McClenaghan said her group was receiving calls from people who were afraid to vote because their immune systems are compromised and there were reports about places without supplies of sanitizer for voters or disinfecting wipes for cleaning voting equipment between each ballot.
Nearly 4.5 million Floridians, more than one in five, are 65 or older, the highest percentage of any state in the country.
Illinois
Gandhi with the lawyers' committee said that for the first time on an Election Day her group was hearing more from frustrated poll workers than from voters.
She said some were substituting for poll workers who had canceled and these people were not sure where to go or what to do and could not reach local election officials. She cited one instance where 25 people had been turned away from a polling site that did not open on time. Eventually, her group was able to redirect people to another location.
A major problem, she said, was the last-minute change in voting locations that left people confused.
Arizona
Closed and changed voting sites were also a problem across the Grand Canyon State. In Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, 80 voting sites were closed because of a lack of poll workers or cleaning supplies to disinfect the sites.
The remaining 151 sites were redesignated as voting centers, meaning that anyone may vote at them. But all the changes left voters confused, said Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, head of the Indian Legal Program at Arizona State University.
Ferguson-Bohnee also expressed concern that proposals to remedy the voting problems by expanding voting by mail may not work for tribal voters who often do not have access to regular mail service.
Ohio
The cancelation came so late that many voters were not even aware of the decision.
Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, used the terms "deeply disturbing," "sheer chaos" and "unlike anything we have seen before" to describe what was happening across the state.
Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton formally issued an order closing all of the state's polling places. Early Tuesday the state Supreme Court rejected an attempt to open them.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced Tuesday that the primary would be rescheduled for June 2 but later in the day the legislative leaders in Columbus announced that setting a new date was their prerogative.
The issue is expected to end up in the courts.
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.