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The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,182 bills so far this session, with 579 bills that tighten the rules governing voter access or election administration and 1,037 bills that expand the rules.
Last week, Missouri’s governor signed a bill that makes the state’s voter ID law stricter and limits mail voting access, but the same bill also creates in-person early voting in the state for the first time. And a new Massachusetts law expands early voting and mail voting, as well as facilitates voter registration.
Meanwhile, North Carolina’s budget bill includes a review of the state’s voter registration system by the Electronic Registration Information Center. The governor of Louisiana vetoed a bill that would have blocked the implementation of federal law and federal grants for election administration.
Looking ahead: Delaware’s governor may sign a bill that allows no-excuse mail voting, bringing the state in line with the majority of the country.
Here are the details:
Missouri governor signs voting bill that creates in-person early voting, while also tightening the state’s voter ID law. On Wednesday, Gov. Mike Parson signed H.B. 1878 into law, making substantial changes to Missouri election law that will go into effect for the November election, but not in time for next month’s primaries. Missouri voters will have two weeks of in-person early voting leading up to Election Day, and election officials will implement safeguards to enhance cybersecurity and the post-election audit process. However, the law also eliminates many forms of ID that were previously acceptable for voting purposes and creates barriers to third-party voter registration activities. Additionally, the law restricts absentee voting in a number of ways, including by prohibiting the use of drop boxes for absentee ballot return.
Massachusetts expands early in-person and mail voting. Gov. Charlie Baker signed a bill that allows voters to vote early in-person or by mail for all elections. Under the new law, the secretary of state will send all registered voters a mail ballot application before each election. Under prior law, in-person early voting and no-excuse mail voting were only available for biennial November general elections. The bill also moves the voter registration deadline from the 20th day before Election Day to the 10th day prior.
North Carolina’s budget bill includes funding for the state to join ERIC, but may limit the state’s ability to use it. Currently, North Carolina is not a member of ERIC, a database used by 31 states and D.C. to maintain accurate voter lists. H.B. 103 would provide one-time funding for membership with ERIC for one year. The bill would also require the State Board of Elections to seek the legislature’s approval prior to making any changes in the policies or procedures related to elections in North Carolina. This requirement would limit the board’s ability to use ERIC, because ERIC may require certain system changes for use of the database.
Louisiana governor vetoes a bill that would interfere with federal election policy. Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed H.B. 359, a bill that would have prohibited election officials from accepting or dispersing federal funds for elections without approval from the joint legislative committee on the budget. The bill also would have prohibited election officials from implementing federal directives or guidance regarding elections unless they were required to do so by state law or received legislative direction to do so.
Delaware is poised to eliminate its excuse requirement for mail voting. The Delaware legislature sent Gov. John Carney a bill that would establish no-excuse absentee voting in the state. Delaware is among a minority of states where voters are required to have a special qualifying reason or excuse in order to vote by mail.
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.