More than half of the early voting centers in Georgia's third largest county have been shuttered ahead of the high-stakes Senate runoffs next month.
When early voting starts next week, Cobb County will keep just five of its 11 voting locations open. That drastic reduction, voting rights groups say, will disproportionately impact Black and Latino voters in the western suburbs of Atlanta.
Ease of access to the voting booth is a central cause of democracy reform groups in every election, but promoting or suppressing turnout in the next federal contest is of particular importance because the twin runoffs will decide which party controls the Senate.
Because no candidate in either race attained a majority in November, both Republican incumbents are having to defend their seats in a rare second round of voting Jan. 5 — David Perdue challenged by documentarian Jon Ossoff and Kelly Loeffler facing Baptist minister Raphael Warnock. If just one of the senators wins a new term, the GOP will remain in charge. If both Democrats win, their party will have 50 seats but will have a majority once Kamala Harris becomes the tie-breaking vice president.
Six voting and civil rights organizations sent a letter Monday to Cobb County election officials asking them to keep all 11 early voting centers that were open in the general election. The organizations underscored the importance of ensuring the county's 538,000 voters could cast a ballot however is most comfortable and convenient for them.
"Reducing the number of advance voting locations for the runoff election when turnout is expected to be high and Covid-19 is raging will have a foreseeable detrimental impact on Cobb County's ability to provide smooth election operations and voters' ability to vote safely and securely," the groups wrote.
This change in election operations could also confuse voters who may try to vote at the same early voting center they used in the fall, they said.
Of particular concern is how these closures will impact minority voters since many of the targeted polling places are in communities with significant Black and Latino populations. Some will have to travel five miles or more to vote.
But Cobb officials say they don't have enough trained staff to populate all the early voting centers for the runoffs — especially with the holidays approaching and coronavirus cases surging,
"The remaining team members who agreed to work would do so only if the hours were less onerous," Janine Eveler, the county elections director, wrote back to the advocacy groups. "We are at the end of the election cycle and many are tired or just unwilling to work so hard, especially during this time of year."
In-person early voting accounted for 45 percent of general election ballots cast in Cobb County. And even with 11 places to vote then, some waited in line as long as 10 hours — another reason the advocacy groups say all the early voting sites should be kept open.
Cobb is the only jurisdiction in the Atlanta metro area planning to reduce early voting options. Neighboring Fulton, Gwinnett and DeKalb counties say they plan to repeat their operation from the fall.
Georgians may also vote by mail, which a million have already asked to do. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is Jan. 1. On Jan. 5, all 145 in-person voting precincts in Cobb County will be open.
The organizations that signed the letter are the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, All Voting is Local Georgia, Georgia's chapter of the NAACP, the SPLC Action Fund, Black Voters Matter Fund and Georgia's chapter of the ACLU.
Cobb is critical to the Democrats' fortunes. President-elect Joe Biden became the first of his party to carry Georgia in 28 years — albeit by less than a percentage point — only because he took the county by 14 points. Ossoff bested Perdue by 11 points in the county and Warnock outpolled Loeffler by 13 points.
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.