Requiring Georgia voters to provide their own stamps for mail-in ballots and ballot applications does not count as an unconstitutional poll tax, a federal judge ruled.
The decision is a setback for one of the most ambitious causes of voting rights advocates, who have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to ease the rules of absentee voting in order to promote turnout for the pandemic-complicated November election.
But within hours of Tuesday's ruling, lawyers filed two fresh suits — in New Hampshire, which like Georgia is a presidential battleground this fall, and Mississippi, a deeply red state widely identified as the toughest place in the country to cast a ballot this year.
These are the details of the cases in the three states:
Georgia
The suit argued that the state's requirement that voters pay their own postage — which is also the law in 32 other states — effectively imposes a poll tax and is also an unjustifiable burden on the right to vote.
Judge Amy Totenberg of Atlanta kept alive the portion of the litigation questioning whether making voters pay postage imperils their voting rights. In declaring that "stamps are not poll taxes," however, she said that was because voters can cast ballots in person at no cost, so paying 55 cents for getting an absentee ballot and 55 cents more to return it is not unconstitutional.
The judge's ruling was not altogether a surprise. She had already declined to order the state to provide postage-paid envelopes for the June primary and Tuesday's runoffs — but had held off on a decision about the general election while pondering fresh arguments from both sides
The case was filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a group seeking to empower communities of color, the Black Votes Matter Fund. They argued that in-person voting is not a viable option during the pandemic and nearly impossible for some elderly and disabled voters.
The judge's ruling noted the bevvy of other lawsuits challenging the state's election rules and described her decision as "certainly not likely the final word on absentee balloting issues or the implementation of the absentee ballot process in Georgia."
Mississippi
The ACLU and the progressive Mississippi Center for Justice sued in state court to make absentee voting available to all during the coronavirus pandemic. After a wave of easements around the country, the state is one of just eight where a particular excuse beyond the fear of Covid-19 will be required to get a vote-by-mail ballot.
The law was changed this summer, however, to add "temporary physical disability" as one of the acceptable reasons along with being under a doctor-ordered quarantine or caring for someone quarantined.
The suit wants a judge to declare that all voters, not just those under doctor's orders, can cite the need to stay away from public places during the pandemic as reason enough to obtain an absentee ballot.
The suit says GOP Secretary of State Michael Watson's plan, which is to allow each local election administrator to decide how permissive the new law has made things, will sow confusion and establishes unfairly different rules.
New Hampshire
The lawsuit is the latest brought by Marc Elias, the attorney who has been running the Democrats' wide-ranging and aggressive effort to get the courts to make voting easier. He has now filed lawsuits in 19 states, this time on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers.
The state sent the mail-in ballots for November to all municipalities this week, and anyone can get one because New Hampshire is one of the places that has decided coronavirus precautions are an acceptable reason this year.
But there are plenty of other problems, the lawsuit says, echoing the complaints in most of the other Democratic lawsuits across the country. It challenges as illegally burdensome the process of registering to vote absentee, the postage charged to send in an absentee ballot, the requirement that absentee ballots arrive at election offices by Election Day, and the ban on people and groups collecting and delivering absentee ballots.
Randy Weingarten, president of the teachers' group, said the AFT is "taking this on as defenders of our democracy and to ensure everyone who is eligible to vote can do so in a fair and safe way in November."
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.