Since the 2020 election, state and federal courts have been inundated with lawsuits over ballot access, recounts, redistricting and other election matters. Generally, they follow a predictable pattern, with partisanship at the heart of the matter.
But Democrats turned the narrative around on Friday, when lawyers for the congressional Democrats’ campaign arm filed a lawsuit against deep blue New York over its absentee ballot practices.
Red states take the brunt of the criticism for their more restrictive rules around ballot access. New York, however, is among the very few liberal states ranked among the places where it is hardest to vote.
Democrats have dominated the New York Assembly for at least two decades and now comfortably control the state Senate after Republicans narrowly held the majority for years. And with a Democrat as governor (Kathy Hochul took over after Andrew Cuomo was forced to resign last year following allegations of sexual harassment), the party would appear aligned with left- and center-left priorities.
But the state has yet to make significant changes to its election practices. Last year, the nonpartisan Center for Innovation & Research studied every state’s rules for absentee and early in-person voting. Only six, primarily right-leaning, states offer neither. New York ranked among one of the nine — again, mostly conservative states — that offer one, but not both of the options.
In November 2021, New York voters had the chance to approve no-excuse absentee ballots through a constitutional amendment but it was voted down, 55 percent to 45 percent.
“New York has tried to make improvements, but until recently, it was very difficult, if not nearly impossible, for voters in the state to vote any way other than in-person on Election Day,” said David Becker, executive director of CEIR. “Mail voting and early voting is somewhat more available to voters now, but New York has tried to implement a huge volume of reforms, and that almost always leads to difficulty. New York is still several steps behind on issues related to voter registration and other areas of election administration as well. The fact remains that it’s far easier to register to vote, and cast a ballot, in most other states than New York, though it’s headed in the right direction.”
In addition to limiting the use of absentee ballots, New York had the third highest rate of absentee ballot rejection (3.6 percent), behind only Arkansas and New Mexico, prompting the lawsuit.
“New York has an unfortunate history of discarding absentee ballots for easily fixable issues that are unrelated to a voter’s eligibility,” wrote Marc Elias, the Democratic election attorney leading the lawsuit. He claims New York is violating the First and 14th amendments as well as the Civil Rights Act.
Elias and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are challenging four specific rejection practices:
- Ballots that could be fixed but not not defined as “curable.”
- Ballots that are ruled invalid only because a voter followed improper instructions from election officials.
- Ballots that were cast in the wrong jurisdiction.
- Ballots that lacked a postmark because the U.S. Postal Service made a mistake.
This isn’t the first time New York has been sued over its absentee ballot rules. In 2020, a group of voting rights organizations filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to force the state to change the absentee ballot verification requirements. According to the Campaign Legal Center, the state had rejected 14 percent of absentee ballots in the 2018 general election.
The plaintiffs settled the lawsuit after the state passed a law enabling voters to cure ballots with certain errors.
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.