The Election Assistance Commission has admonished the nation's largest manufacturer of voting equipment for making misleading claims in some of its marketing materials.
The federal agency's upbraiding of Election Systems & Software was prompted by a complaint from two good-government groups, Free Speech for People and the National Election Defense Coalition, which discovered that ES&S was claiming that one of its voting machines with a modem option was EAC certified.
The EAC action is significant because the agency has been criticized for not aggressively monitoring the voting machine industry, which is one of its principal assignments. The small but primary agency overseeing how states conduct voting has struggled through a leadership change, turnover and budget cutbacks in the runup to this November's election but has been starting to rebuild itself in recent months.
The agency sets voluntary standards for voting systems, and most states adopt by law or regulation some aspect of the federal testing and certification program.
Security is one of key elements of the standards, particularly in the wake of hacking attempts by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. Any part of a voting system that could connect to the internet is considered to create an opportunity for a virtual break-in.
In their complaint field in January, the advocacy groups pointed out that marketing materials sent out for the ES&S DS200 voting system suggested that a version that included a modem had been federally certified. Only the version without a modem is certified, because modems are seen as opening up equipment to easy interference.
The company told the government it never intended to imply the modem-version was certified, promising to remove all references to the optional use of modems from its marketing materials.
The EAC's head of voting machine certification, Jerome Lovato, nonetheless concluded that promoting the modem violated the agency's testing and certification rules. He gave the company 15 days to come up with a plan to remove the sales brochures from circulation and notify customers they were inaccurate.
And he said ES&S should take the same steps with materials that exaggerated in describing vote tabulation systems as being submitted to rigorous and extensive independent testing campaigns as part of the federal certification program.
The company rejected that finding and said it wouldn't take corrective action, asserting its tabulation systems have all been approved by the EAC, even those for use in states that don't use the federal standards.
Lovato told the company it could have seen its equipment decertified and its manufacturer registration suspended. Instead, the federal regulator concluded the letter this way: "You are a valued stakeholder and I appreciate your proactive and prompt response."
Officials at Free Speech for People said that ES&S has sold voting machines with wireless modems to states around the country — including the presidential battlegrounds of Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The company's website points out that using the modems to transmit unofficial results is legal in some states and that the company employs "numerous security safeguards to protect the transfer" of the information.
Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People rejected the company's claim that it was not intending to be deceptive. "ES&S has a pattern of deception," she said. "We're very pleased the EAC took action to rebuke ES&S for its false claims, but this is just a part of a larger pattern of duplicity from the voting system vendors that operate with little to no oversight and without meaningful regulation."
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.