While much of the debate over election administration boils down to the left clamoring for “voting rights” and and the right demanding “election integrity,” there are some solutions that have proven attractive to both sides.
For example, let us introduce you to ERIC.
More formally known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, ERIC is a nonprofit organization that assists its members in maintaining accurate voter rolls by reviewing data provided by the states.
“Funded and governed by member states, ERIC is the most effective tool available to help election officials maintain accurate voter rolls. Using ERIC, members also provide voter registration information to potentially eligible individuals,” said Shane Hamline, the organization’s executive director.
Election officials from seven states – Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Utah, Virginia and Washington – formed ERIC in 2012. New Jersey became the most recent member earlier this year, bringing the current total to 32 states plus Washington, D.C.
And those states now regularly share voter registration lists and data from motor vehicle agencies with ERIC, which also gathers Social Security death data. ERIC combines all the data to determine voters who have moved from one member state to another, voters who moved within a member state, voters with duplicate registrations in one state and people who have died.
States can then use those reports to properly update their voter registration lists. Members must request at least one of the reports at least once a year but may do so more often.
But it’s not just about removing people from the voter lists. ERIC also provides a report on people who are eligible to vote but remain unregistered, based on voter registration and motor vehicle data. Membership requires states to use that list to send out voter registration information at least once every two years.
Two additional reports further help with list maintenance. One uses U.S. Postal Service data to identify voters who have moved and another lists people who may have voted in more than one state or who may have cast multiple ballots in one state.
According to information provided by ERIC, four of the founding member states were led by Republicans and three by Democrats. As the organization has grown, its membership has remained about evenly divided.
Membership in ERIC may soon expand further. In early July, North Carolina enacted a law providing funding for the state to join ERIC for one year, but there are some restrictions.
States pay $25,000 to join ERIC and then annual dues based on size of the voting age population, ranging from $15,000 to $75,000. That money covers ERIC’s $1 million operating budget.
“We have witnessed repeated attacks on our democracy at the national level. The many states who are members of ERIC are working toward creating easy and equitable access to voter registration, and I am glad to join them,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said earlier this month in announcing his state had become the latest to join ERIC.
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.