This weekly update summarizing legislative activity affecting voting and elections is powered by the Voting Rights Lab. Sign up for VRL’s weekly newsletter here.
The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,212 bills so far this session, with 583 bills that tighten voter access or election administration and 1,061 bills that expand the rules. The rest are neutral, mixed or unclear in their impact.
Election season is not complete, with the Georgia runoff on tap for Dec. 6. A state judge ruled that counties may offer early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26, rebuking guidance issued by the secretary of state.
Elsewhere, New Hampshire’s Special Committee on Voter Confidence found that the state’s elections are accurate and that ballot-counting devices are reliable, despite legislative efforts to prohibit ballot-counting devices. Ohio legislators unveiled new bill language that would create stricter ID requirements and make it more difficult to receive and cast mail ballots. And the newly elected Alabama secretary of state announced that he will withdraw the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonpartisan collective of 33 states and the District of Columbia that shares registration information to keep voter rolls accurate.
Looking ahead: The Texas legislators have pre-filed dozens of election-related bills ahead of their 2023 session. The Kentucky secretary of state proposed limits to the discretion 2021 H.B. 574 gave county clerks on consolidating polling places, finding that some counties “over-reduced” this election.
Here are the details:
Ohio legislators revive 18-month-old bill, propose restrictions on voting. Lawmakers unveiled a substitute for H.B. 294, originally introduced in May 2021, late last week. The proposed substitute bill, which has not yet been adopted by the House Government Oversight Committee, would prohibit officials from mailing unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters; limit drop box placement; restrict voters’ ID options; and remove provisions in the original bill facilitating voter registration at the DMV. Legislative leaders hope to pass the bill before the end of the year.
Texas Legislature gears up for the 2023 session with a focus on criminalizing elections. The Texas Legislature comes into session on Jan. 10, 2023, but its members have already pre-filed over 40 bills related to voting and elections. One clear trend in these bills are attempts to further criminalize certain election-related activities. Pre-filed bills would increase criminal penalties for voting when ineligible, expand who has authority to enforce election law, and even provide the attorney general the ability to punish local prosecutors for failing to sufficiently enforce criminal election laws.
Georgia judge allows Saturday early voting for Senate runoff. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox ruled that counties may offer early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign brought suit after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger issued guidance claiming that counties may not offer early voting on that date due to a state holiday on the preceding Friday. The state has appealed the ruling in an attempt to prohibit Saturday voting. Election Day is Tuesday, Dec. 6.
New Hampshire commission affirms the integrity of the state’s elections. A draft report from New Hampshire’s Special Committee on Voter Confidence found that the state’s elections are accurate, that there is no evidence of widespread fraud, and that ballot-counting devices are reliable. The committee will also recommend expanded training for election officials, increased post-election audits, and consideration of an independent redistricting commission when the final report is published. The report comes as some legislators have attempted to prohibit ballot counting devices and require hand counting, baselessly claiming that the machines are unreliable.
Kentucky secretary of state backs limits on polling place consolidation. Secretary of State Michael Adams, reflecting on this month’s election, determined that some county clerks “over-reduced” the number of polling places, using discretion given to them by 2021 H.B. 574. In response, Adams proposed either giving him and the governor veto authority over counties’ consolidation plans, or establishing statutory floors for how much consolidation counties can do.
Incoming Alabama secretary of state pledges withdrawal from ERIC. Wes Allen, who was elected secretary of state of Alabama this month, announced that he would follow through on a campaign promise to withdraw the state from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonpartisan collective of 33 states and D.C. that shares registration information in an attempt to keep voter rolls accurate. The decision conflicts with guidance offered by outgoing Secretary of State John Merrill, who recommended the state continue to make use of the service.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.