The state of voting: July 25, 2022
This weekly update summarizing legislative activity affecting voting and elections is powered by the Voting Rights Lab. Sign up for VRL’s weekly newsletter here.
The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,185 bills so far this session, with 579 bills that tighten the rules governing voter access or election administration and 1,041 bills that expand the rules.
The Wisconsin Legislature rejected a rule allowing clerks to complete missing address details for ballot witnesses. And many Florida voters will need to update their voter registration files in order to vote by mail. Both of these issues could have major impact on the states’ August primary elections.
Delaware enacted no-excuse absentee voting and same-day registration. A Michigan court struck down a legislative practice that has been used to avoid submitting ballot initiative language to voters in its original form. California enacted a new law that will provide better transparency around signature verification.
Here are the details:
Delaware enacts no-excuse absentee voting and same-day registration. Governor John Carney signed into law S.B. 320, which opens mail voting to all registered voters and eliminates the state’s requirement that voters have a qualifying excuse to vote by absentee ballot. A second law, H.B. 25, will allow prospective voters to register through Election Day. Under prior law, the state’s voter registration deadline was the fourth Saturday before Election Day.
Wisconsin’s legislature rejects Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) efforts to count valid ballots with minor omissions, while voters with disabilities sue to ensure access to voting assistance. Wisconsin mail ballots can be rejected over minor omissions, such as a missing zip code for their ballot's witness. Wisconsin is one of a small number of states that requires voters to fill out their mail ballots in front of a witness, who must then write their signature and address on the certificate envelope. In accordance with guidance issued by the WEC in 2016, election officials may fill in missing witness address information in certain circumstances. In response to a lawsuit seeking to invalidate that policy, the WEC codified that guidance as a rule and filed it with the Legislature’s committee that reviews administrative rules. The committee then rejected the rule.
A recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision invalidating drop boxes seems to assert that voters – including those with disabilities – cannot be assisted when returning their complated ballot to a municipal clerk. On Friday, voters with disabilities sued to ensure they could exercise their federal rights, which entitle them to assistance in voting, in the upcoming primary and thereafter. Voters have recently won similar litigation in North Carolina.
Florida voters face new hurdles due to ID requirements. As Florida’s August 23rd primary approaches, many voters are receiving a last-minute request from their supervisor of elections to update their registration files with their driver’s license or Social Security number. Voters without this information in their registration files will be unable to vote by mail due to the new ID requirements enacted in last year’s S.B. 90. Roughly 33,000 voters in Duval County alone were informed of the need to update their information. Counties throughout Florida, where nearly 5 million people voted by mail in 2020, are conducting similar outreach to avoid leaving thousands of voters without access to mail-in voting.
Michigan court strikes down legislative practice of approving and amending ballot measures as “thwarting the power of the people.” The Michigan Court of Claims ruled last week that the state legislature may not approve a citizen-initiated ballot measure prior to its submission to voters and then subsequently amend the approved measure during the same legislative session. The court ruled that adopting a ballot measure before it reaches voters and then changing it within the same legislative session “thwart[s] the power of the People to initiate laws and then vote on those same laws — a power expressly reserved to the people in the Michigan Constitution.” The ruling alleviates advocate concerns that the legislature may have used the strategy with one of the election-related ballot measures currently pending approval for the ballot.
California enacts a bill that provides greater transparency into the signature verification process. Governor Gavin Newsom signed A.B. 1619, a new law that requires voters to be informed that the signature they provide during the voter registration process will be used to validate the signature on their mail ballot.
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.