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The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,217 bills so far this session, with 584 bills that tighten voter access or election administration and 1,062 bills that expand the rules. The rest are neutral, mixed or unclear in their impact.
The Ohio House of Representatives’ Government Oversight Committee on Monday approved a bill that would restrict mail voting and make the state’s voter ID law more stringent.
Last week, New York enacted a bill that will ensure eligible votes cast at an incorrect polling place are still counted. And Missouri lawmakers prefiled legislation to give voters an opportunity to correct errors on their mail ballot envelopes.
Looking ahead: Ohio H.B. 294, the restrictive bill that moved out of committee this morning, may be heard on the House floor tomorrow, followed by a concurrence vote in the Senate either tomorrow or Wednesday. In the aftermath of the long lines and lower turnout in this year’s runoff election, Georgia officials are discussing reforms to 2021’s controversial S.B. 202.
Here are the details:
New York enacts legislation to ensure eligible votes cast at the wrong polling place are counted. On Dec. 6, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed S.B. 284, which ensures that if a voter casts a provisional ballot (called an “affidavit ballot” in New York) at the wrong polling place, all votes they were eligible to cast will count, so long as the person voted in the correct county and state Assembly district. Under the previous law, these ballots would have been rejected.
Ohio moves legislation to restrict mail voting and make the state voter ID law more stringent. Earlier today, the Ohio House of Representatives’ Government Oversight Committee voted out a substitute for H.B. 294, an omnibus bill that would, among other provisions, restrict acceptable forms of voter identification, limit the secretary of state’s authority, prohibit prepaid postage for mail ballots, and limit the number of drop boxes for mail ballots to one per county. The next step for this bill is a vote on the House floor, which could happen tomorrow.
Missouri lawmakers prefile a bill to give voters an opportunity to correct errors on their mail ballot envelopes. Under Missouri law, mail ballots are rejected if the ballot envelope is not notarized or is missing a signature. S.B. 210 would ensure that, prior to rejecting a ballot, county officials contact the voter and give them an opportunity to correct the problem so their ballot may be counted. Most states have this type of “cure” process; Missouri is currently one of 19 states without a statewide cure process.
After long lines and lower turnout, Georgia officials eye additional runoff reforms. Last year’s S.B. 202 moved runoff elections forward by a month, cutting the number of required days of early voting by over two-thirds. In the first election since the bill’s passage, turnout was down over 20 percent as compared to the January 2021 runoff. These changes contributed to hours-long lines and thousands of mail ballots being sent too late for voters to return them by the required deadline. Following last week’s election, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger expressed openness to several reforms for future election cycles, including eliminating runoffs in favor of ranked-choice voting; lowering the threshold for triggering runoff elections; and requiring that counties open more early voting locations. One lawmaker announced plans to prefile a bill that would extend the runoff period.
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.