Editor's note: This article has been corrected to show estimated data, not actual numbers, in regards to completed ballots.
The number of people who vote by mail is expected to grow by 40 percent from the last midterm election and could nearly match the 2020 totals, according to data collected by advocates for remote voting.
In 2018, 30.4 million people voted by mail. The National Vote at Home Institute estimates that more than 42.6 million will do so this year – virtually the same completion rate (71 percent) as four years ago.
In 2020, amid the height of the Covid-19 pandemic with states making it easier to vote by mail (at least temporarily), 66.5 million used that option, according to Census Bureau data.
NVAHI is watching the numbers closely to see if the nation surpasses the 60-million mark this year.
“Hitting 60 million (or more) means that voting by mailed-out ballot has gone ‘mainstream’ beyond the few initial states in the Western third of the country,” said NVAHI’s director of research, Gerry Langeler. “Depending on total turnout, and return rates for those mailed-out ballots, about one-third of all U.S. votes or more will have been cast by a ballot the voter received in the mail, in a non-pandemic emergency rules year.”
Eight states proactively send all registered voters a ballot to be submitted by mail or dropped off at a designated location, including three – California, Nevada and Vermont – that are doing so for the first time this year. California alone accounts for 8 million more people voting from home.
Hawaii implemented its vote-by-mail system for the 2020 election and Utah expanded from a county-by-county to statewide program in 2019.
Colorado, Oregon and Washington were all running vote-by-mail elections in 2018. Washington, D.C, is continuing its temporary plan to mail ballots to all voters and may make it a permanent feature for the city’s residents. Vermont and D.C. are the only non-Western jurisdictions using such a system.
But some of the biggest increases are coming from places that are not pure vote-by-mail states, according to Langeler.
The highest rate of return, so far this year, can be found in the 21 states that do not proactively send ballots to all voters but also do not require people who request a mail-in (or “absentee”) ballot to provide an excuse. NVAHI estimates that 10.2 million of the 12 million requested ballots (85 percent) will be returned. (A number of states, including New York and Texas, have not yet made their data available.)
Drilling down into individual states, Langeler found that Michigan and Pennsylvania, which both moved to no-excuse absentee voting following the 2018 election, have seen significantly increased use of voting by mail – by 6 percentage points and 11 percentage points, respectively.
Among the eight vote-by-mail states, turnout is expected to reach 65 percent. Six states invite voters to register for permanent vote-by-mail status. In those half-dozen states, 74 percent of the 5.8 million mailed ballots are expected to be completed and sent back.
But Massachusetts has shown the biggest increase, going from 3.3 percent utilization of absentee ballots to 22.5 percent, now that the state is required to send all voters an application for mail-in balloting before every election.
“That undoubtedly accounts for a major portion of the differential lift between Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, as well as the fact that the Massachusetts legislators who were against this move stood down after they lost in court,” Langeler said.
And it’s not just about creating a system – implementation makes a difference, or as Langeler puts it: “There is a second-order potential impact – how the policy is rolled out.”
He pointed to examples in Massachusetts, which proactively mails applications, and Illinois which previously required voters to request a ballot each election but now allows people to sign up to be on a permanent vote-by-mail list. A similar proposal is on the ballot in Michigan this year.
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.