With half or more of all ballots coming by mail this fall, it will take days if not weeks for the counting to be completed — likely delaying not only the climax of a close presidential race but also the final word about control of the Senate and dozens of other narrow contests.
Because at least this aspect of an unprecedented election has become easy to predict, the National Task Force on Election Crises, a recently formed group of election experts and academics, is urging the news media to be more transparent about its reporting process in order to give the public more confidence in the integrity of the results.
The task force on Wednesday asked the Associated Press, CNN, Fox News and the three broadcast networks for their detailed plans for reporting returns and calling races. Many other news organizations, including local TV stations and major newspapers, rely on these outlets (the AP most of all) before projecting a winner.
For previous presidential contests, the National Election Pool (just CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC this year) has relied on in-person and over-the-phone exit polling to model likely outcomes on a precinct-by-precinct and state-by-state basis — information they use to augment the returns as they come in. The AP and Fox News say this year they will use a different voter survey, conducted online and over the phone.
But these models will be complicated significantly by the certain surge in mail-in voting. Since most states are expecting unprecedented shares of votes cast remotely, the historical data on mailed ballots won't be much use when coming up with projections. And many states only turn to counting absentee ballots once the tabulating of in-person returns is finished.
To reassure the public about the reliability of results, the task force recommends news organizations publicly share the following at least one month ahead of Election Day:
- How exit polling and voter surveys will account for the increase in absentee voting.
- How discrepancies between results in hand the night of Nov. 3 and final results will be contextualized given ballot counting will take days or weeks, especially in battleground states.
- Policies and procedures for protecting the people in the news division assigned to call races — so-called decision desks — from internal and external pressures to project a winner before results are clear.
- Plans for covering any politician who declares victory before an accurate, evidence-backed projection has been made.
President Trump has signaled he plans to rely on the election night results to decide if he should claim re-election. Plenty of evidence says that could prove irresponsibly premature — especially in light of polling showing his supporters are much likelier to vote in person while Joe Biden's allies say they'll vote by mail.
The logical consequence would be that early returns suggesting a strong Trump showing will start evaporating, for a totally legitimate reason, as the envelopes are tabulated. The emerging nicknames for this are "the red mirage" or "the blue shift," depending on your point of view.
If news outlets take extra steps to increase transparency around their coverage, it will increase the public's confidence in the election process and outcome, the task force wrote.
"The role of the free press — your role — has never been more important," the letter concludes. "We urge you to take these additional steps towards transparency as part of your mission to inform the public and deliver accurate coverage of election results, especially how you account for the millions of expected absentee ballots. The American electorate — and our democracy — is depending on you."
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.