Everything about this year's election season has been exceptional, so it comes as no surprise that the plans for monitoring Election Day are without precedent.
On the day before the big day, members of the Election Protection Coalition, which includes many prominent civil rights groups, and the Voter Protection Program, which includes attorneys general from around the country, outlined ambitious and assertive plans to make sure that people who set out to vote in person Tuesday have unfettered access to the polls and help if they encounter problems.
Although an astonishing 97 million votes have already been cast either by mail or in person, a consequence of intensified partisan feelings and the realities of the coronavirus pandemic, that still means 60 million ballots or more are almost certain to be cast for President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden at polling places before all voting in the nation ends Tuesday night.
Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Justice Under the Law (which leads the Election Protection Coalition), said the group's efforts are the most extensive in the 20 years it has existed.
She said the group handled about 120,000 telephone calls seeking help in casting a ballot or confronting suspected voter suppression in all of 2016 — and just in the last month has handled 135,000 such calls. And she said the number of legal volunteers it had enlisted and trained to promote a fair vote Tuesday has crested 42,000 — probably 10 times the number four years ago
So far, Clark said, the biggest volume of calls with concerns were coming from the swing states of Pennsylvania (17,800), Florida (14,900) and Texas (5,100).
Among the issues they expect to deal with Tuesday are the sorts of long lines voters have encountered in early voting states and the failure of absentee ballots that were requested to show up in people's mailboxes.
Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause, said the venerable good government and watchdog organization organized about 6,000 volunteers to monitor the polls in 2016 and about 6,500 for the midterm 2018 election. This year's total is seven times that many — about 45,000.
In addition, several thousand volunteers will be monitoring social media for misinformation.
Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, said proof that the disinformation campaigns have worked are polls that find two-thirds of voters worried their ballot will be counted. Despite the fear, she said, "Voter excitement has been something profound."
For those who have a problem voting, the coalition hotline is 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683).
On their call, the attorneys general and other officials from the battleground states of Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona and Texas condemned any attempts to threaten or intimidate voters on Tuesday. They all expressed confidence that the election process would be safe and secure, but said if any problems did arise, they would be prepared to take swift action.
At the same time, the Justice Department announced it will be sending staff Tuesday to monitor for federal election law violations in 44 jurisdictions in 18 states — ranging from the D.C. suburb of Fairfax County, Va,. to Los Angeles, and from Boston to Houston
The heightened presence of government officials and outside watchdogs comes as the nation seems on edge going into a presidential election in a way not matched in decades. Their apprehension is not only about whether Trump or Biden wins. It's also about profound concern that basic democratic foundations are wavering. Whether their vote counts, whether the loser accept the result and whether the winner will be able to at least partly repair the breach are questions on the minds of millions.
Seven in 10 voters in one of the last pre-election polls, by the Associated Press, say they are anxious about the election and the potential for violence afterward. Biden supporters were more likely than Trump voters to be nervous — by 72 percent to 61 percent.
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.