The policy battle for voting rights is reaching a fever pitch. Republicans are arguing vociferously that greater safeguards are needed to prevent widespread voter fraud, with a wave of state legislative efforts that limit mail-in balloting, restrict early voting windows and reduce locations for easy ballot drop-off. We witnessed Texas Democratic lawmakers become fugitives from justice as they fled their state in protest over proposed restrictive legislation. Congressional Democrats are fighting for expanded voter access through the For the People Act, which would create national safeguards against barriers making it harder for many citizens to vote.
The discussion is now framed as a zero-sum game, one that pits security versus access. For me, there's only one factor that matters: The strength of our democracy depends upon the ability of our citizens to have their voices heard. But the devil remains in the details. Simplistically pitting security versus access is not only inaccurate, it may result in more people having their right to vote restricted.
A case in point is the wording of the For the People Act. In their battle to protect and expand voting rights by increasing polling places and vote-by-mail, Democrats have inserted language that could end up making access for millions of people more difficult.
Tucked into hundreds of pages of the bill is the following language: "Nothing in this section may be construed to allow the marking or casting of ballots over the internet." This attempt to enhance security by creating a national mandate for paper-only voting is an anti-technology provision that could stop progress many states have made to deploy an evidence-based approach to utilize proven technology and improve access for people who need it. In response to Covid last year, many states passed laws to utilize secure remote voting options to protect the rights of disabled citizens and overseas military members. This one line could create significant barriers for persons who need assistive technology to cast their ballot, and makes it more difficult for overseas military to have their votes counted when sending paper ballots from overseas.
Military personnel, overseas citizens and people living with disabilities vote in far lower numbers than the population at large. History has shown time and again that those who don't exercise their voice at the polls have their needs ignored by elected officials. Banning technology in the name of security is myopic, halting proven methods we already use in the voting process. Disabled voters, for example, use Americans with Disabilities Act-mandated assistive technology when they vote in person at polling places. Overseas military currently use fax machines and email, which are less secure and lack privacy. The proposed language could either limit them to mail-in ballots that often don't reach clerks' office in time to be counted, or possibly restrict the utilization of current email or faxed-in balloting.
Last month, we saw a great example of a bipartisan effort to improve access for active members of the military. It is no surprise that the co-sponsor of the bill is Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a combat veteran. With Republican Sen. John Cornyn, she introduced the Reducing Barriers for Military Voters Act, which would establish a secure electronic voting system for active-duty service members stationed in hazardous duty zones or rotational deployments.
While the Democrats have taken on a generational battle over protecting voting rights, they may be committing legislative malpractice by actually impeding voters' ability to cast a ballot through existing and proven technology that is highly secure, ADA compliant and offers privacy that is not afforded within a "paper only" framework.
Good legislation should mandate outcomes (e.g. a safe, accessible, and auditable election) rather than specific methods. Restricting remote marking and delivery of ballots utilizing state-of-the-art technology could mean that, in the future, millions of people who cannot safely walk into a polling station will be denied their most important right our constitution provides.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.