Georgia, which has been sued plenty in recent years for allegedly violating the rights of its electorate, is facing a fresh complaint about voter suppression of the most obvious kind: Making people stand in line for hours to exercise their democratic rights.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court Thursday, is the latest development in the courthouse crusade to make it easier to vote in the presidential election.
In neighboring Alabama, a state judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that sought to ease voting rules for the elderly and disabled. And Friday saw the latest in a series of suits, this time in Pennsylvania, seeking to guarantee a do-over for people who make mistakes on their absentee ballot forms.
These are the latest developments:
Georgia
The new suit will gain particular notice because of the state's evolution into one of the most prominent political battlegrounds of the year. The contest for the state's 16 electoral votes is now a tossup, an array of recent polls shows, and in an unusual twist both Senate seats are on the ballot this fall and have become highly competitive. So Georgia's turnout has taken on extraordinary importance.
The state Democratic Party and the party's Senate campaign arm are convinced their candidates will do best with as many people voting as possible. Their suit says the long lines that forced people to wait upwards of eight hours in stifling heat to vote in the June 9 primary violated the Constitution.
Sara Alami of Fulton County, which takes in much of Atlanta, arrived at her polling place half an hour before the doors opened — and still had to wait six hours. Another resident of the county, 71-year-old Lucille Anderson, gave up trying to vote after confronting the long lines at her polling place three times — in the morning, midafternoon and evening.
Two years ago voters in Georgia waited to vote longer than in any other state, a full 2.5 times the national average, according to the suit.
The Democrats allege the long lines were because of the reductions in the number of polling places, late opening of polling places, not enough voting machines, not enough technicians to fix broken machines and poor training. They asked a judge to order all those problems get fixed before November.
Pennsylvania
The newest litigation in the battleground state mirrors those in several other such presidential tossups, where the rate of absentee ballot rejection could prove decisive in November.
The suit asks a federal judge to require that voters be notified if their ballots get rejected because the signature line on the envelope is blank or the handwriting does not match what's on file at the election office — and be given a chance to remedy the problem.
"Pennsylvania must create a uniform process to let voters fix signature-related issues with their mail-in ballots in order to give people confidence that their vote is being counted," said Paul Smith of the Campaign Legal Center, which sued on behalf of the League of Women Voters, the League of United Latin American Citizens Council and the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh.
Alabama
Civil Court Judge J.R. Gaines of Montgomery on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters and several sick or elderly citizens. It said the health of voters during the pandemic was illegally threatened by the requirement for two witnesses or a notary to countersign an absentee ballot envelope.
The judge said the suit raised political issues that shouldn't be decided in the courts. He also said the plaintiffs had no legal standing to file the suit and that the election officials were protected from being sued.
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.