The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ballot decision is a step in the right direction



In its coverage of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s recent cast vote record decision, Democracy Docket framed the ruling as a dangerous victory for “election deniers” and claimed it gave a “DHS conspiracy theorist access to 2020 election data.”

That framing misses the central point of the case: The court did not authorize the exposure of anyone’s private vote. It allowed access to election records that help the public verify whether reported vote totals match recorded vote data.

In a republic, ballot secrecy protects the voter. Transparency protects the result. Both principles can coexist, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court understood that.

Americans across the political spectrum have lost faith in election systems at different moments and for different reasons.

The court’s actual holding was straightforward: Cast vote records, or CVRs, are not the “contents of ballot boxes or voting machines” under Pennsylvania’s Election Code and therefore are not categorically exempt from public disclosure.

A CVR is not a physical ballot. It does not contain information about voters. It contains information about ballots — and ballots do not contain personally identifying information.

A properly configured CVR cannot link a ballot to a voter in a way that compromises ballot secrecy. In the Lycoming County system at issue, the data was randomized and did not contain personally identifying voter information.

The court explained that the CVR numbers do not correspond to the order in which voters checked in or cast ballots and that those randomization features “significantly decrease the likelihood” of identifying an individual vote. The court concluded that disclosure would allow the public to check the math without violating ballot secrecy.

There is a line of thinking that says a CVR can be kept from the public if there is some edge case where the voter behind a ballot could be reasonably guessed. What that argument misses is that ballot secrecy exists to protect voters from the state — not to protect the state from public scrutiny.

If a government builds or certifies a voting system that allows officials, vendors, or anyone else to identify which voter cast which ballot, the problem is not the citizen asking for public records and the remedy is not secrecy for the government. The remedy is fixing, randomizing, or decertifying the system.

If a county claims that it cannot disclose a CVR because the public could determine how individual voters voted by matching multiple records together, that should trigger an immediate and serious response from state election authorities.

A voting system that allows ballots to be connected back to voters is not merely inconvenient for public-records compliance. It is a direct threat to ballot secrecy.

Public access to CVRs is not about exposing voters. It is about allowing citizens to confirm that election totals add up. Bloomberg Law captured the ruling more accurately: Pennsylvanians may review raw voting records to ensure elections are accurate; the court said disclosure promotes trust, confidence, and legitimacy without violating voter secrecy law.

Americans across the political spectrum have lost faith in election systems at different moments and for different reasons. In September 2024, Gallup found that only 57% of Americans were confident that presidential votes would be accurately cast and counted nationwide, with a massive partisan gap: 84% of Democrats expressed confidence, compared with only 28% of Republicans.

After the 2024 election, AP-NORC found that about six in 10 Americans believed the presidential vote was counted accurately nationwide, while independents remained notably less confident.

In April 2026, Reuters/Ipsos found sharp partisan divides on election fraud beliefs, while also finding that majorities of both Democrats and Republicans remained confident their own ballots would be counted.

This is not a one-party problem. Republicans have raised concerns about mail ballots, voter rolls, citizenship verification, ballot harvesting, and machine tabulation. Democrats, too, have raised serious concerns about election technology when the perceived threat came from foreign interference or insecure electronic systems.

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After the 2016 election, the Clinton campaign joined recount efforts in key states, with Marc Elias writing that the campaign had examined allegations involving hacking, outside interference, and voting technology.

In the years that followed, prominent Democrats pushed aggressively for paper ballots, audits, and replacement of insecure voting machines. Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden’s PAVE Act, backed by Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Cory Booker (N.J.), Kamala Harris (Calif.), Tammy Baldwin (Wisc.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), and others, would have mandated hand-marked paper ballots and risk-limiting audits in federal elections.

Let’s be honest: Concern about election technology was not invented in 2020. Democrats were warning about electronic voting systems, paperless machines, hacking, and public confidence long before the current fight over CVRs.

In the case of Pennsylvania, election researcher Heather Honey asked a basic question: Can the public inspect the data necessary to verify the count? The Pennsylvania Supreme Court answered yes, subject to the election code and subject to the protection of ballot secrecy. That should be an easy win for anyone who claims to care about democracy.

Instead, Democracy Docket labeled Honey a “conspiracy theorist” and portrayed the ruling as a victory for sinister forces. But the court did not adopt a conspiracy theory. It adopted a transparency principle. In fact, the court said disclosure promotes “fair, honest, and transparent elections.”

I know Heather Honey as a hard-working, dedicated patriot, a wonderful person, and a loving parent. Her biggest personal failing, as far as I can tell, is that she is a Philadelphia Eagles fan — a burden no court can remedy.

The attack on Heather Honey is totally misplaced. If Democracy Docket disagrees with the legal reasoning, it should argue the law. If it believes certain CVR formats in certain counties could threaten secrecy, then the correct response is not to smear citizens who request public records.

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The correct response is to demand voting systems that protect ballot secrecy by design: randomized ballot records, standardized public CVR formats, and certification standards that make it impossible to connect a ballot back to a voter.

Marc Elias, the founder of Democracy Docket, has built a platform devoted to voting rights and election litigation. He knows better than most that election legitimacy depends not only on access to the ballot, but on public confidence that lawful votes are accurately counted.

CVR transparency is one way to earn it. It does not reveal who someone voted for or publish private voter choices. Properly handled, it lets citizens, researchers, journalists, campaigns, and watchdogs compare reported totals against underlying tabulation records. It is a public audit trail.

And if any county says its CVRs cannot be disclosed because the records would allow ballots to be matched back to voters, then the public-records request is not the scandal. The voting system is.

Democracy does not become weaker when citizens can verify government math. It becomes stronger.

So Democracy Docket should correct its framing, and Marc Elias should leave Heather Honey alone. She is simply defending one of democracy’s oldest and most important rules:

Trust the voters. Protect the secret ballot. And let the people check the math.

'Tribalism' is healthy — and America should embrace it



Somewhere between the 10,000th think piece about polarization and the hundredth talk on bridging divides, a strange consensus formed: Tribalism is democracy's deepest disease, its most persistent poison.

Professors and pastors warn of it. Columnists mourn it. Podcasters monetize their mourning. The diagnosis is always the same: Humans clustering together with their own kind is dangerous, primitive, a malfunction of the civic mind.

The people most loudly condemning tribalism tend to be surrounded by people exactly like them, at universities exactly like theirs.

Fine. But what if they're wrong?

Not partially wrong, but actually, foundationally, embarrassingly wrong — the way doctors were wrong about bloodletting or the way everyone was wrong about cargo pants being over.

Friendship by another name

Tribalism has an image problem. Many associate it with mob violence, ethnic cleansing, and mass unrest. But that's not tribalism. Not really. The base ingredient — people who share values and show up for each other — predates democracy, predates government, predates trousers. We used to just call it friendship.

My life runs on tribes. Boxing buddies on Tuesday mornings — punching things together turns out to be exceptional social glue. Drinks on Friday evenings with people who know my views, share my basic read on how the world should work, and will tell me honestly when I'm being an idiot. Football on Sundays: same faces, same complaints about the same referee.

These groups form through proximity, repetition, and the steady accumulation of shared in-jokes about Tom’s terrible parking. Nobody recruits anybody. The politics surface eventually, the way they always do — not as a pitch but as a mutual nod. Oh, you also think that. Good. Pass the beer.

Condescending critique

The anti-tribalism crowd conflates the existence of a tribe with hostility toward outsiders. But the two aren't the same thing, and they don't have to travel together. A group of friends who share values is not automatically a firing squad aimed at people who don't. The aggression that looks like tribalism is usually something else — fear, scarcity, manipulation by people with something to gain from the mob. The tribe itself is just the group chat.

There is also something condescending baked into the critique. The implication is that enlightened people transcend their loyalties. The sophisticated move is to float above any particular community, dispensing equal approval in all directions. This person does not exist. And if people like that do exist, nobody wants to live beside them, work with them, invite them to anything, or get stuck next to them at a wedding.

The people most loudly condemning tribalism tend to be surrounded by people exactly like them, at universities exactly like theirs, publishing in the same journals, citing each other's footnotes, all nodding along in perfect, oblivious unison. The irony apparently doesn't register.

Tribal to the bone

My ancestors were Irish. They were tribal to the bone, tribal by necessity, tribal the way people get when the alternative is disappearance. That tribalism — stubborn, clannish, occasionally violent, always inconvenient for the people trying to govern them — is precisely what produced the independence that eventually let them leave. Seven centuries of enthusiastic British imperialism tore Ireland apart. The tribe was the solution, not the problem.

America was the same story once. The founders were a tribe. So were the suffragettes, the labor organizers, the civil rights marchers. Every movement that actually changed anything was, underneath the rhetoric, a group of people who genuinely liked and trusted each other enough to take serious risks together.

As for the loneliness epidemic affecting the country, it didn't arrive because people had too many tribes, but because tribes became harder to build and easier to lose. Jobs moved. Cities got expensive. The bowling leagues, union halls, and neighborhood associations that once knit people into groups of mutual obligation slowly disappeared, and we got LinkedIn as a replacement.

Against this backdrop, telling people their tribal instincts are dangerous is useful the way a fire safety lecture is useful during an actual fire.

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Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images

Believe in belonging

What tribalism needs — contrary to the credentialed, conspicuously left-leaning, remarkably group-minded people writing op-eds about its dangers — isn't elimination, but better PR and a little calibration.

Think of the happiest moments of your life. They almost certainly happened with the same handful of people, in the same handful of places. Some of those people aren't around any more. That absence is its own argument — not for giving up on tribes, but for holding them closer while you can.

The alternative — atomized individuals, each navigating life as a fully independent unit, allegiant to nothing, accountable to no one — isn't utopia. In truth, it's just lonely, and loneliness radicalizes. Belonging stabilizes. This isn’t a controversial finding, but it’s certainly inconvenient for the people whose careers depend on pathologizing friendship.

Is mass democracy making society less human?



As politics becomes increasingly shaped by social media, mass messaging, and distant institutions, BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is questioning whether modern societies have simply grown too large to be human.

And author of “The Master and His Emissary” Dr. Iain McGilchrist has an answer for him.

“More and more, our politics is this disembodied understanding. It is the thing fed to us through social media feeds and communicated through advertisements and headlines and these things. People feel like they know more about the world than they’ve ever known,” MacIntyre says.

“In reality, they know not even their neighbor or the issues that they face politically. And so these things have become completely disconnected. To my mind, the way that this is evolving is that we are basically becoming less human in all of our political interactions, making it very difficult for us to then understand the other as human, to understand the society and the world around us,” he continues.


MacIntyre believes this will precede a “collapse in our political systems” that will bring us back “to more of a city-state model.”

“Do you think that we can continue to see these large, you know, super-states expand and continue to lean on this idea that they have some kind of meaningful input from the individuals involved in their citizens, or do you think that ultimately we will have to contract and once again deal with each other at a much more local level when it comes to political organization?” MacIntyre asks McGilchrist.

“I do think we will need to do that very definitely if we’re to survive,” McGilchrist answers.

“We will have to rediscover the virtues of intermediate size,” he continues, pointing out that it may resemble the “downfall of a civilization.”

“But it might actually enable the regeneration of a much better way of life in which we lived with more modest demands on the earth, closer to the earth, cultivating the earth in common with our own community, sharing our lives with them, helping and supporting one another,” he explains.

“That would be a very different one from the one in which we are alien from one another,” he adds.

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

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The left says it loves democracy — so pass the SAVE Act



By requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections, the SAVE America Act reinforces a basic principle — that the right to vote in American elections is reserved solely and specifically for American citizens.

President Trump is right to prioritize the passage of this critical legislation, which is currently being debated in the U.S. Senate after earlier passing the House.

Indiana’s photo ID law treats everyone equally, without regard to race, color, or ethnicity. So does the SAVE America Act.

And nothing about this proposal should be controversial.

The nonsensical resistance to the SAVE America Act reminds me of similar opposition we faced in Indiana when — in 2005 — our legislature became the first in the nation to pass a law requiring that voters show photo IDs before casting ballots.

As Indiana’s secretary of state at the time, I championed the legislation from its inception. Once it passed, I was responsible for implementing it. And finally, I helped defend Indiana’s photo ID law over the course of four lawsuits — including one that wound up at the U.S. Supreme Court, where we prevailed in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.

My question to the foes of the SAVE America Act is the same one I posed to opponents of our photo ID law 20 years ago. Namely: What don’t you like about secure, trustworthy elections?

The photo ID law treats everyone equally, without regard to race, color, or ethnicity.

So does the SAVE America Act.

The photo ID law simply makes sure that voters are who they say they are.

The SAVE America Act simply makes sure that voters are U.S. citizens.

Few factors are more essential to the survival of American democracy than popular confidence among the people in the fairness of elections and the veracity of their outcomes.

The left claims to revere democracy. Leftists remind us of their deep affection for government of, by, and for the people every time they baselessly claim that we conservatives are out to destroy it based on our supposedly unquenchable jonesing for dictatorial authoritarian rule.

If the leftists love democracy as much as they say they do, then why aren’t they the loudest and most enthusiastic supporters of safeguards like photo ID requirements or the SAVE America Act?

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Instead, they despise these common-sense measures.

To explain away their recalcitrance toward protecting the integrity of elections, critics say rules such as requiring photo IDs or proof of citizenship tend to disenfranchise certain voters — especially minority voters.

If they truly believe that certain demographic groups lack the necessary intelligence or resourcefulness to produce photo IDs or proof of citizenship — such as birth certificates or passports — then quite possibly they are racist to their core. And that’s reprehensible.

If they know better than that but are just plucking such concepts out of the air to rhetorically justify their stance, then they are disingenuous.

The charade should stop.

The Senate needs to pass the SAVE America Act now.

It’s a recipe for stronger election integrity, better standardization of rules nationwide, increased public confidence in elections, and better accountability for election officials.

“The people are demanding it,” President Trump recently said at a House GOP event. They’re right.

A free Iran starts with women in charge



The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled Iran with brutality for nearly four decades, has thrown the Persian Gulf country into a historic moment of uncertainty — and possibility. His welcome passing shattered the familiar, oppressive order and forces a question Iran can no longer postpone: What comes next?

That question arises as Iran sits at the center of a deeper shift that may prove historic and generational. Much remains uncertain: how change will unfold, how long it will take, and what form it will assume. One principle, however, should guide every serious observer: Lasting change in Iran must come from within, driven by Iranians themselves and their organized resistance. Anything imposed from abroad or engineered through outside force will fail.

Iran’s destiny will be shaped by Iranians: by students, workers, professionals, and above all by women who refuse to accept a future defined by repression.

For more than four decades, Iran’s clerical establishment has displayed many vulnerabilities. One stands out as both defining and revealing: institutionalized misogyny. This is not merely a social failing. It is a governing doctrine.

That doctrine has become the regime’s weakness.

Women have been among the primary victims of Iran’s repression. They have also become the most dynamic force challenging it. Across the country, women no longer merely participate in dissent. They drive it. In city after city, they confront the regime’s most repressive forces. In many instances, they do not just join protests; they lead them.

One striking feature of this movement is its intergenerational character. Observers rightly note the youth of Iran’s protesters. But mothers march alongside daughters, and that image captures something profound about Iran’s national awakening: The demand for freedom is no longer confined to one age group or social class. It has become a shared national aspiration.

In moments of historic transformation, leaders emerge whose lives embody a movement’s aims. In Iran’s struggle, one such figure is Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. For nearly half a century, she has been engaged in Iran’s fight for freedom. Her commitment is personal. She lost one sister to the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, and another under the rule of the ayatollahs while she was pregnant. Such losses would silence many. For her, they hardened resolve.

Rajavi’s significance lies not only in her story but in her vision. Over decades, she has helped cultivate a generation of women within Iran’s resistance — women who now occupy leadership roles, organize networks, and sustain activism under extreme repression. Tens of thousands of women affiliated with her movement have died in the struggle for freedom. That sacrifice, measured in lives rather than slogans, lends credibility to the movement she represents.

This is not symbolic inclusion. It is a structural transformation. Women at every level of opposition challenge the regime’s core assumption that power must remain exclusively male.

At the center of Rajavi’s platform is a 10-point plan outlining a democratic future for Iran. At its heart sits a principle the current regime finds intolerable: gender equality. In that vision, equality is not a concession. It is a foundation — essential to political legitimacy, economic progress, and justice. Women’s rights are not a peripheral demand; they are a declaration that a future Iran must break with decades of repression.

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Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

Sometimes a single image conveys what volumes of analysis cannot. Few signals would announce a new era more clearly than the emergence of a modern-minded Muslim woman as a central leader of democratic change. That would mark more than a political transition. It would signal renewal — a break with tyranny and a declaration that Iran’s future belongs to all its citizens.

History offers countless examples of societies that seemed immovable until, suddenly, they were not. Authoritarian systems often look strongest just before they weaken and most permanent just before they dissolve. The forces now stirring within Iran — especially the courage and leadership of its women — suggest the country has entered such a moment.

The lesson for the world is straightforward. Iran’s destiny will not be shaped by foreign intervention or external engineering — and it will not be served by fake leaders like Reza Pahlavi, who rely on social media and bots for relevance. Iran’s destiny will be shaped by Iranians: by students, workers, professionals, and above all by women who refuse to accept a future defined by repression.

Their struggle is not only national. It reflects a universal truth: The desire for freedom, once awakened, cannot be permanently suppressed.

The direction of Iran’s transformation is becoming clearer. And if history is any guide, when that transformation reaches its turning point, it will bear a defining hallmark: It will have been led, inspired, and sustained by women.

Blame bias, not Bezos, for the Washington Post’s downfall



The Washington Post just laid off more than 300 employees — roughly 30% of its newsroom — cutting back sports, local coverage, international reporting, and books. The paper has shed staff before, including a reduction in 2025 and voluntary buyouts, as losses piled up. Reports put the Post’s losses at $177 million over the past two years, with annual deficits topping $100 million since 2023.

Predictably, fired staffers and their allies blame owner Jeff Bezos for refusing to write blank checks indefinitely. They want the world’s fourth-richest man to underwrite their failing business model forever.

Downsizing isn’t a tragedy. It’s a market verdict.

But that’s not the story. The Post didn’t collapse because Bezos got cheap. It collapsed because its newsroom got ideological — and readers stopped trusting it.

The Post built its modern reputation on tough reporting and institutional seriousness. Then its editors and writers started injecting personal politics into straight news, smuggling advocacy into headlines, and treating dissent as moral failure. That approach earned applause inside the Beltway, but it bled credibility outside it. Readers left. Subscribers disappeared. Revenue followed.

Immigration coverage captures the pattern.

In 2018, the Post ran a story headlined “How Trump is changing the face of legal immigration.” The piece claimed an 81% drop in arrivals from Muslim-majority countries and a 12% overall decline in legal immigration, framing the change as a deliberate demographic overhaul. The story leaned on cherry-picked State Department numbers that covered only part of the admissions system while ignoring other federal data. The paper dressed activism up as analysis and called it news.

That same year, the Post published “U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question,” implying a broad campaign of anti-Hispanic discrimination. The story suggested “hundreds, possibly thousands” faced baseless fraud accusations tied to midwife-assisted births.

The piece ignored the long history of documented fraud in those cases and left readers with a clear impression: The Trump administration targeted Hispanics. In fact, denial rates actually fell under Trump — from 35.9% in 2015 to 25.8% in 2018. The Post later appended an editor’s note acknowledging errors challenged by the State Department. That kind of walk-back never repairs the original damage.

In 2024, the habit remained. The Post accused Republicans of “misleading ads” about the border while soft-pedaling the scale and timing of the Biden-era surge. It scolded language choices, such as “illegals” and “harsher,” framed enforcement as cruelty, and applied different standards depending on which party spoke.

This isn’t just an immigration problem. It’s a newsroom culture problem.

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Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The Post’s rush to judgment during the Nicholas Sandmann incident in 2019 showed how quickly narrative can replace verification. The paper treated a Kentucky teenager as a national symbol of Trump-era racism based on a misleading clip, then watched the fuller video upend the story. The Post paid an undisclosed settlement. The reputational hit lingered.

That pattern — moral certainty first, facts later — has infected much of corporate media. CNN, the New York Times, and their peers keep hemorrhaging trust because they keep selling ideology as “objective” reporting. They blur the line between news and opinion, then act shocked when audiences treat them as partisan actors.

That distortion carries consequences beyond subscriptions. When media outlets portray immigration enforcement as inherently malicious and frame routine operations as persecution, they turn policy disagreement into moral panic. They train audiences to view law enforcement as an occupying force. That mindset fuels the kind of street-level provocation that turns tense encounters into tragedy.

Journalism carries a sacred obligation: Tell the truth plainly, verify before amplifying, and separate reporting from activism. Too many at the Post treated that obligation as optional. The audience noticed. Circulation reportedly plummeted to about 97,000 daily in 2025. Financial losses followed.

Downsizing isn’t a tragedy. It’s a market verdict.

If the Washington Post wants to survive, it must rediscover objectivity — or keep shrinking until only its own employees bother to read it.

Here’s What Trump Means By Calling For ‘Peace Through Strength’

Peace through strength, defined by 'hard-nosed realism' over the 'utopian idealism' of a bygone era, is poised to yield both a popular and durable American defense policy.

Trump v. Slaughter exposes who really fears democracy



In the recently argued Trump v. Slaughter case, most of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to affirm what should be obvious: The president has a constitutional right under Article II to dismiss federal employees in the executive branch when it suits him.

That conclusion strikes many of us as self-evident. Executive-branch employees work under the president, who alone among them is chosen in a nationwide election. Bureaucrats are not. Why, then, should the chief executive’s subordinates be insulated from his control?

When the Roberts Court overturned Roe in 2022 and returned the issue to the states, many voters responded with fury. The electorate did not welcome responsibility. It resented it.

A vocal minority on the court appears to reject that premise. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor warned that allowing a president — implicitly a Republican one — to control executive personnel would unleash political chaos. Jackson suggested Trump “would be free to fire all the scientists, the doctors, the economists, and PhDs” working for the federal government. Sotomayor went further, claiming the administration was “asking to destroy the structure of government.”

David Harsanyi, in a perceptive commentary, identified what animates this view: “fourth-branch blues.” The administrative state now exercises power that rivals or exceeds that of the constitutional branches. As Harsanyi noted, nothing in the founders’ design envisioned “a sprawling autonomous administrative state empowered to create its own rules, investigate citizens, adjudicate guilt, impose fines, and destroy lives.”

Yet defenders of this system frame presidential oversight as a threat to “democracy.” Democrats, who present themselves as democracy’s guardians, warn that allowing agency officials to answer to the elected president places the nation in peril. The argument recalls their reaction to the Dobbs case, when the court returned abortion policy to voters and was accused of “undermining democracy” by doing so.

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Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

On that point, Harsanyi and I agree. Judicial and bureaucratic overreach distort constitutional government. The harder question is whether voters object.

From what I can tell, most do not. Many Americans seem content to trade constitutional self-government for managerial rule, provided the system delivers benefits and protects their expressive preferences. The populist right may bristle at this arrangement, but a leftist administrative state that claims to speak for “the people” may reflect the electorate’s will.

Recent elections reinforce that suspicion. Voters showed little interest in reclaiming authority from courts or bureaucracies. They appeared far more interested in government largesse and symbolic rights than in the burdens of republican self-rule.

Consider abortion. Roe v. Wade rested on shaky legal ground, yet large segments of the public enthusiastically embraced it for nearly 50 years. When the Roberts Court overturned Roe in 2022 and returned the issue to the states, many voters responded with fury. States enacted expansive abortion laws, and Democrats benefited from unusually high turnout. The electorate did not welcome responsibility. It resented it.

This reaction should not surprise anyone familiar with history. In 1811, Spaniards rejected the liberal constitution imposed by French occupiers, crying “abajo el liberalismo” — down with liberalism. They did not want abstract rights. They wanted familiar authority.

At least half of today’s American electorate appears similarly disposed. Many prefer guided democracy administered by judges and managers to the uncertainties of self-government. Their votes signal approval for continued rule by the administrative state. Republicans may slow this process at the margins, but Democrats expand it openly, and voters just empowered them to do so.

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I anticipated this outcome decades ago. In “After Liberalism” (1999), I argued that democracy as a universal ideal tends to produce expanded managerial control with popular consent. Nineteenth-century fears that mass suffrage would yield chaos proved unfounded. Instead the extension of the franchise coincided with more centralized, remote, and less accountable government.

As populations lost shared traditions and common authority, governance shifted away from democratic participation and toward expert administration. The state grew less personal, less local, and less answerable, even as it claimed to act in the people’s name.

Equally significant has been the administrative state’s success in presenting itself as the custodian of an invented “science of government.” According to this view, administrators form an enlightened elite, morally and intellectually superior to the unwashed masses. Justice Jackson’s warnings reflect this assumption.

I would like to believe, as Harsanyi suggests, that Americans find such attitudes insulting. I am no longer sure they do. Many seem pleased to be managed. They want judges and bureaucrats to make decisions for them.

That preference should trouble anyone who still cares about constitutional government.

Ballots by Prime: Democracy’s dangerous next-day delivery



When 250 state ballots arrive in your Amazon order, faith in election security gets harder to defend. Yet that’s exactly what happened to a woman in Newburgh, Maine, who opened her package of household items to find five bundles of 50 official Maine referendum ballots.

Adding to the irony, the ballots were for Question 1 — a measure asking voters whether to tighten absentee ballot rules and require photo ID. The woman did the right thing and called authorities. But what if she hadn’t?

How can citizens trust the vote when ballots appear as shipping mistakes?

Now under investigation, the bizarre mix-up raises urgent questions. Who had access to the ballots? Were chain-of-custody rules violated? How many more ballots might be “out for delivery”?

For years, skeptics of election fraud have claimed concerns about ballot integrity are overblown. Yet events like this prove the opposite: The system is riddled with vulnerabilities. When official ballots wind up in an Amazon box, the process is beyond merely “flawed” — it’s broken.

Election officials and lawmakers must confront an uncomfortable truth: The safeguards meant to protect our democracy aren’t working. Anyone arguing against stronger voter ID laws should look to Newburgh. How can citizens trust the vote when ballots appear as shipping mistakes?

This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a test of whether Americans still believe their votes matter. A democracy depends on a transparent, verifiable process — from printing to counting. When that chain breaks, confidence collapses.

Newburgh should be a wake-up call. Every ballot must be tracked, every voter verified, every election beyond reproach. Reassurances and press conferences won’t cut it. Citizens deserve a voting system that’s airtight, accountable, and secure. Anything less insults the republic.

Commonsense reforms aren’t complicated. Require a government-issued photo ID to vote — the same standard used to board a plane, buy a beer, or enter a federal building. For mail-in ballots, require proof of identity both when requesting and returning a ballot. Without that, the system leaks from every seam.

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Photo by Moor Studio via Getty Images

When ballots get rerouted into cardboard boxes unnoticed, the integrity of democracy itself comes into question. It signals a culture that prizes convenience over vigilance, treating ballots like junk mail instead of sacred instruments of self-government.

Democracy doesn’t collapse in secret; it erodes in daylight while people look away. That’s why reform must be bold, not bureaucratic. States need top-to-bottom reviews of how ballots are printed, stored, distributed, and tracked — and consequences for failures.

If democracy is worth defending, ballots are worth protecting. Anything less, and we’ve already surrendered what makes the vote sacred.

Civics isn’t a class; it’s the backbone of the republic we fight for



I slept through high school civics class. I memorized the three branches of government, promptly forgot them, and never thought of that word again. Civics seemed abstract, disconnected from real life. And yet, it is critical to maintaining our republic.

Civics is not a class. It is a responsibility. A set of habits, disciplines, and values that make a country possible. Without it, no country survives.

We assume America will survive automatically, but every generation must learn to carry the weight of freedom.

Civics happens every time you speak freely, worship openly, question your government, serve on a jury, or cast a ballot. It’s not a theory or just another entry in a textbook. It’s action — the acts we perform every day to be a positive force in society.

Many of us recoil at “civic responsibility.” “I pay my taxes. I follow the law. I do my civic duty.” That’s not civics. That’s a scam, in my opinion.

Taking up the torch

The founders knew a republic could never run on autopilot. And yet, that’s exactly what we do now. We assume it will work, then complain when it doesn’t. Meanwhile, the people steering the country are driving it straight into a mountain — and they know it.

Our founders gave us tools: separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, elections. But they also warned us: It won’t work unless we are educated, engaged, and moral.

Are we educated, engaged, and moral? Most Americans cannot even define a republic, never mind “keep one,” as Benjamin Franklin urged us to do after the Constitutional Convention.

We fought and died for the republic. Gaining it was the easy part. Keeping it is hard. And keeping it is done through civics.

Start small and local

In our homes, civics means teaching our children the Constitution, our history, and that liberty is not license — it is the space to do what is right. In our communities, civics means volunteering, showing up, knowing your sheriff, attending school board meetings, and understanding the laws you live under. When necessary, it means challenging them.

How involved are you in your local community? Most people would admit: not really.

Civics is learned in practice. And it starts small. Be honest in your business dealings. Speak respectfully in disagreement. Vote in every election, not just the presidential ones. Model citizenship for your children. Liberty is passed down by teaching and example.

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Photo by Bill Oxford via Getty Images

We assume America will survive automatically, but every generation must learn to carry the weight of freedom.

Start with yourself. Study the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and state laws. Study, act, serve, question, and teach. Only then can we hope to save the republic. The next election will not fix us. The nation will rise or fall based on how each of us lives civics every day.

Civics isn’t a class. It’s the way we protect freedom, empower our communities, and pass down liberty to the next generation.

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