Ballots that arrive several days late in the pivotal battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and North Carolina will get counted. But whether all those votes will actually count in the contest for president is still not sure.
That's the main takeaway from back-to-back rulings Wednesday from the Supreme Court. They were likely the last important voting decisions before an Election Day where the ground rules have been whipsawed as never before by partisan litigation fueled by a pandemic.
The Pennsylvania case remains in legal limbo. That because all the court did was say it wasn't going to fully reconsider the three-day grace period before the voting stops — but that it might afterward.
It made that decision after the state promised to to instruct local boards of elections to segregate all the mailed votes that arrive after the polls close Tuesday but before the end of the workday Friday — making it logistically possible to remove that part of the tabulation later, potentially changing the outcome in a tossup state with 20 electoral votes. (As of Thursday, 1 million requested absentee ballots in the state had not yet been returned, while 2.1 million had.)
The nine-day extension that North Carolina has granted for ballots postmarked as late as Tuesday was locked down by the court, however — so the presidential race could be up in the air until Nov. 12 or longer if the state's 15 electoral votes prove decisive. (The state says 600,000 of its requested mailed ballots have not come back.)
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, on the bench only a day, did not participate in either case because, the court said, she had not had time to get up to speed on the disputes.
The non-legalistic bases of both are the same. People are voting absentee in unprecedented numbers to avoid possible coronavirus exposure at their polling places. Democrats have spent months pushing for more leniency in the distribution and counting rules for mailed ballots. And Republicans have fought them at almost every turn, arguing with hardly any evidence that such relaxations will sully American democracy with cheating.
The Pennsylvania extension was ordered by the state Supreme Court, based on the belief that the state Constitution required the easements to protect voting rights in light of Covid-19 and pervasive Postal Service delays. The Supreme Court first upheld that decision on a 4-4 tie last week. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's three liberals, later explaining his position that state courts are free to interpret their own state constitutions in voting cases.
The state Republican Party tried again, and on Wednesday only three of the most conservative justices said they wanted to decide the case in the week before Election Day and will ask their colleagues to pick it up afterward: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
The same three also dissented from the North Carolina decision, which was unsigned and had no majority opinion. It upheld a federal appeals court, which ruled 12-3 last week that the state Board of Elections could extend the deadline under its authority to change voting rules during emergencies. (It's done the same thing after hurricanes in two recent election years.)
Where the court takes election law next is a bit unclear.
Alito declared that, by not finalizing the Pennsylvania fight, the election will be "conducted under a cloud" and the court has "needlessly created conditions that could lead to serious postelection problems."
He also reiterated his view that the federal Constitution gives state legislatures exclusive authority to make the rules for their congressional and presidential elections.
That echoed a concurring opinion issued on Monday by Justice Brett Kavanaugh when the court struck down an absentee ballot extension in another battleground, Wisconsin, that had been ordered by a federal judge. His opinion has alarmed some legal scholars and democracy reformers because it pointed to the Supreme Court's decisions in cases culminating in Bush v. Gore. That 5-4 ruling, which settled the disputed 2000 results in Florida and handed the presidency to George W. Bush, has been ridiculed ever since as both legally flawed and motivated by raw partisanship.
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.