Kevin Johnson is the Executive Director of the Election Reformers Network, a national nonpartisan organization advancing common sense reforms to protect elections from polarization.
What would the NCAA do if the head referee in the Ohio State-Michigan game spent his free time leading rallies and fundraisers for the Wolverines? Even if he assured fans he’d be neutral for the game itself, Buckeye nation would never believe him.
This scenario just happened in the political arena, in the campaign surrounding the August 8 Issue 1 ballot initiative.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose planned, campaigned for, solicited money for, and bent state rules for the “yes” vote in that election. During the final weeks of the campaign, he was a declared candidate for the U.S. Senate with a personal interest in taking sides to gain GOP support. Though implications for the abortion ballot initiative in November have dominated news coverage of August’s Issue 1, this leadership failure atop the state’s election system should not be ignored. Ohio Elections need neutral referees just as much as sports do.
LaRose brushed off accusations of conflicts of interest, saying campaigning occurred outside his “official function.” But imagine a judge publicly giving advice to help one side win a case before him; he’d still be sanctioned if he did so outside his courtroom. Likewise, open public bias from election administrators shouldn’t happen, whether within official functions or not.
LaRose is hardly alone. Research found that one-third of secretaries of state serving since 2000 endorsed a candidate running in a race under their supervision, and 20% lost lawsuits in circumstances where secretaries’ actions arguably favored their political party. Tellingly, these partisan acts occurred at a higher rate among the subset of secretaries who ran for higher office — as LaRose is now.
Ohio elections have been undermined before by blatant partisanship in the conduct of elections, under Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who co-chaired President George W. Bush’s state reelection campaign and set rules reducing voter registration and provisional ballots to help Bush win.
Ethical problems happen on both sides politically. Since 2021, Colorado’s Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold has led a political action committee that spent millions helping Democrats win in battleground states. While not illegal, her actions no doubt make it harder for Colorado Republicans to trust she’ll neutrally administer elections in the state.
Secretaries of state often argue that they don’t count the votes or manage polling stations, so bias poses no risk to elections. But that argument overestimates citizens’ knowledge of election details, and underestimates their need for individual leaders, not a system, to trust in. And secretaries do have discretion over election steps that can impact turnout and thus results, discretion LaRose apparently used to help “yes” voters get around paperwork hurdles this summer.
Frank LaRose is a decorated military veteran who expertly managed pandemic elections in 2020. But his sense of duty and discipline seems to have disappeared under the pressure candidates face these days to prove their hyper-partisan bona fides. His failings illustrated why, in our polarized era, it’s no longer fair to voters for a partisan politician to oversee elections.
There are several options for changing course. For one, the secretary of state could be elected in nonpartisan elections, an idea supported by more than 70% of Republicans and Democrats nationwide. To ensure fairness and functionality, that idea needs supporting guardrails, such as provisions to prevent party insiders from running under the guise of being nonpartisan, as well as ethics requirements.
A bolder and more comprehensive solution is to transfer election oversight from the secretary to an impartial election board, which would appoint a professional, nonpolitical election administrator. (One approach to structuring such a board is explained here.)
In the area of redistricting, Ohio voters increasingly agree that it’s a conflict of interest for legislators to draw district maps and pick their own voters. The same logic holds for elections: It’s a conflict of interest for activists favoring one side to be in charge. All of our peer democracies have rules to keep blatant partisanship out of their elections — rules that help explain why voter confidence is so much higher overseas.
The voters of Ohio have the power to fix this, using the same mechanism their vote protected on August 8. What better way to follow up on the August 8 Issue 1 result than by launching an initiative to permanently de-politicize the position of secretary of state, to make Ohio a national leader in building sensible election systems all citizens can trust?
This piece was originally published in the Ohio Capitol Journal.
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.