Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate has joined the chorus of Republican officials who claim to have found evidence of voter fraud.
Pate announced late last week that he had referred nine voters to county attorneys for allegedly voting twice in the 2018 election. They are suspected of voting in Iowa after having voted in another state. Another 27 were identified, Pate said in a news release, of voting in Iowa first and then in another state.
The information was discovered through Iowa's involvement in the multi-state Electronic Registration Information Center, which shares data in order to improve the accuracy of voter rolls.
That is the same method Ohio's Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, used to identify 10 people who appear to have cast ballots in Ohio and another state in the 2018 election. In mid-December, LaRose announced he was referring the names to the state's attorney general.
He said then that "allowing one voter to cast multiple ballots diminishes the value of the legally cast ballot of each voter."
Iowa's Pate used similar language: "One fraudulent vote is too many. It nullifies a legally cast vote."
LaRose had earlier caused a stir when he said he found 354 people who are not U.S. citizens but were registered in the state. Of those, 77 voted in the midterm, he said.
Voting rights advocates had criticized LaRose for that report, saying what he found may have been simple mistakes, people confused about the system or people who got naturalized later than the records he was looking at.
They cited the debacle that occurred in Texas earlier in 2019, when the acting secretary of state claimed nearly 100,000 non-citizens had been found on the voter rolls. Subsequent checks revealed many of those were incorrectly identified as non-citizens and the controversy that ensued ended Republican David Whitely's chance of winning confirmation as secretary of state.
Claims of voter fraud have recently been a mostly Republican cause, starting with President Donald Trump, who claimed "millions and millions of people" voted illegally in the 2016 election and thereby cost him the popular vote. None of those claims have been verified and the commission Trump established to investigate voter fraud disbanded without issuing a report.
This past fall, Republican incumbent Matt Bevin initially claimed voter fraud when he lost a close gubernatorial race to Democrat Andy Beshear. He later dropped those claims.
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida referred to "rampant voter fraud" in his successful bid to unseat Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson in 2018 but none was found.
Advocates say the constant claims of fraud erode voter confidence in elections. But raising concerns about improper voting is a running theme when Republicans justify removing people from voter registration rolls in the name of keeping them up to date. Federal law does require states to properly maintain voter lists by eliminating people who have moved or died.
GOP voter fraud concerns, which Democrats say are overblown, are also regularly cited when Republicans propose new laws, such as requiring voters to have an ID.
Democrats see these laws as bald attempts to reduce turnout, especially among minorities, who are more likely to vote for Democrats.
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.