Greenhalgh is an advisor on election security to Free Speech For People, which advocates for a constitutional amendment to permit more campaign finance regulation. Fernandez is director of the Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended everyone and everything, creating a new normal: living over the internet. Members of the House who fear the health risks of coming to the Capitol have even been permitted to transmit electronically their votes for legislation. But this shouldn't be seen as any green light for states to consider online voting in our elections.
Unlike Congress, which has insisted that transparency be central to its first-ever foray into proxy voting, the American electoral system relies on the citizens' choices remaining secret. A ballot cast over the internet could be undetectably manipulated by hackers. House members' remote votes are public record, delivered in writing and then announced verbally during each roll call, so any attempted hacking would be easily exposed.
To keep voters safe during the Covid-19 outbreak, many states are making it easier to vote by mail and thereby avoid close contact at polling places. Their plans must also include adequate accommodations for disabled voters,
But any proposal that we move to online voting is contrary to the evidence. Architects of the internet and cybersecurity warn that online voting is still inherently insecure.
Computer scientists and national security experts have long warned that online voting cannot be made secure and that ballots cast online will be highly susceptible to manipulation on a large scale, from hackers anywhere in the world. This spring the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Election Assistance Commission voiced that same position, publishing a blunt warning to state election officials that online voting is at high risk of hacking.
The loudest advocate for online or mobile voting has been billionaire Bradley Tusk, who has founded a project aimed solely at promoting online voting. Tusk has personally paid for several online voting pilot programs and has worked with the system vendors and local governments to advance a public campaign to promote this alternative.
Initially, Tusk was aggressively promoting the mobile voting system developed by Voatz, which claimed its use of blockchain was the way to solve the security vulnerabilities of online ballot transmission.
After researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reverse-engineered Voatz's app and published a devastating paper on the many ways it could be hacked to change votes undetectably — and then this conclusion was backed by a security review by Trail of Bits — Tusk switched and began promoting a system from DemocracyLive instead. That digital system has now been used in New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia and Washington state.
Three disingenuous and inaccurate claims about these systems bear examination.
First, printing a copy of the vote after it is transmitted online is not a "paper ballot."
The systems transmit a completed ballot over the internet that, by definition, is internet voting and includes all the security and privacy risks. Even if a paper ballot is printed at the election office, no voter can confirm the vote choices are correct. While DemocracyLive describes its system as generating a "voter verified" ballot, voters are not able to verify their votes were recorded correctly on the printout.
In other words, votes could be hacked and changed and neither the voter nor election officials would know. Printing a paper ballot at the election office doesn't remove the threat of hacking or lessen the security risks and doesn't provide a "voter verified" paper ballot.
Second, DemocracyLive's system has not been rigorously tested.
Both Tusk and DemocracyLive have publicly touted the importance of rigorous security testing and claimed that system has been tested by third parties. The problem is that the results aren't made public. We don't know if the tests were appropriate and robust, and if the system did well or failed miserably.
Tusk made similar claims about Voatz for years. But when a competent security review was finally conducted and made public, the results were disastrous.
DemocracyLive's system is not certified by the federal government.
Any such claim is not true. The federal government doesn't certify online voting systems because it found it couldn't write standards that would ensure security. DemocracyLive uses the Amazon cloud, which has been qualified for government use, but that is just one part of a system with many components that are neither tested nor certified in any way by the federal government. The use of a government-approved element of the system doesn't confer any sort of federal government approval or certification. As we know, the federal government says online voting is insecure.
American democracy depends on our elections. Voting systems must be accessible to all while preserving the security and secrecy of every vote. We must ensure all voters can vote, but online voting is not the solution.
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.