A federal judge says that for this election, at least, Texas must preserve straight-ticket voting, which is how two-thirds of the state's ballots are usually cast.
The decision, if it survives a promised appeal by Republicans in charge in Austin, would likely assist Democrats within reach of their best showing in the state in decades this fall. But it would distress many democracy reform advocates, who lament how civic engagement is limited and two-party dominance is preserved when voters are allowed a single choice supporting all of one party's candidates.
As voting policies continue to shift, thanks to decisions in statehouses and courthouses across the country, the ruling was one of three developments in purple states Friday. Iowa joined the roster of states that will start processing absentee voting envelopes sooner than usual, and Montana joined the list of states extending the usual deadline for the arrival of mailed ballots.
These are details of the most recent developments.
Texas
The ruling came less than three weeks before the start of early in-person voting in the second-most-populous state, which for more than a century has given Texans the opportunity to cast a single-party line vote — which 5.1 million did just two years ago. The Republican-majority Legislature eliminated that option starting this fall.
But Judge Mariana Garcia Marmolejo of Laredo temporarily blocked implementation of the law on the grounds that, during the coronavirus pandemic, it would "cause irreparable injury" to voters "by creating mass lines at the polls and increasing the amount of time voters are exposed to Covid-19." She also said the switch would discriminate against Black and Latino voters because their waits would be especially long, in part because many live in urban and rural precincts with the fewest polling places per person.
Garcia Marmolejo's decision effectively reverses her ruling in June dismissing an earlier version of the lawsuit, in which the Democrats pressed essentially the same arguments the judge embraced this time. She said some procedural differences, but mainly the persistence of the health emergency, are what prompted her change of mind.
GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Saturday he would press the federal appeals courts to act quickly to reverse the judge, because otherwise officials will have to scramble to reprogram voting machines and reprint ballots.
Texas historically has one of the nation's longest ballots, especially in presidential years, when many state and county legislative, administrative and judicial posts are also contested. Democrats argue the straight-ticket option allows many voters to do what they'd do anyway, if they had to mark dozens of ovals, and has the vital benefit of keeping people moving quickly through polling places.
Republican pushed the law ending the practice with arguments echoing many good-government experts, who say it will give underdogs and outsiders stronger chances and compel voters to become better-informed about all the contests and candidates.
Texas is one of seven seven states that have done away with straight-ticket balloting in the past decade, leaving just five sure to make the option available this fall: Battleground Michigan and solidly Republican Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and South Carolina
President Trump carried Texas by 9 percentage points in 2016, extending a GOP winning streak that started in 1980, but two polls released last week had him ahead of Joe Biden by 3 and 5 percentage points — essentially within the margin of error. Democrats also are within reach at taking several congressional seats from the GOP and maybe reclaiming the state House for the first time in 18 years.
Iowa
The bipartisan state Legislative Council approved a request from Republican Secretary of State Paul to allow election clerks to open outer absentee ballot envelopes and verify signatures starting two days earlier than in the past — on the Saturday before Election Day. And now the counting of the ballots can begin a day ahead of, instead of on, Election Day.
Like so many other election officials expecting a record number of mailed-in votes, Iowa is worried that delayed starts to processing and counting will lead to delayed results in close races — and make voters anxious about the election's integrity.
Nearly 600,000 Iowans have requested absentee ballots so far, compared to fewer than 150,000 at this time in 2016. Trump appears to have a narrow but hardly impenetrable lead in the race for the state's six electoral votes, while GOP Sen. Joni Ernst's reelection quest and Democrats' bids to hold three of the four House seats are all too close to call.
The Legislative Council, a group of lawmakers empowered to make some policy switches in place of the Legislature, also decided to allow the mailing of ballots to voters in health care facilities — normally, the law requires hand delivery — and to allow the secretary of state to shift polling place locations in an emergency.
Montana
State trial Judge Donald Harris decided that absentee ballots postmarked by the time the polls close must still be counted if they arrive six days late — by Nov. 9.
The pandemic "presents an untenable problem for voters who wish to have all the available information prior to casting their ballot, who wish to reduce potential Covid-19 exposure, and who also wish to have their vote counted," he wrote. "Moving the Election Day receipt deadline to a postmark deadline would alleviate the pressures voters are facing in the November 2020 general election and result in less disenfranchised voters."
Unless there's an appeal, which did not immediately seem likely, Montana will be the ninth state to extend the deadlines this year — reducing the number of disenfranchisements but extending the timetable for knowing the results of close races. The other deadlines have ranged from three to 17 days.
Trump is confident of securing the state's three electoral votes again. The marquee election is the tossup Senate contest between GOP incumbent Steve Daines and Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock.
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.