Month: January 2026

What is an election and when is it completed?

That’s the legal question at the heart of Watson v. Republican National Committee, the mail-in ballot case the U.S. Supreme Court took up in November 2025. The court will most likely hand down a ruling before the midterm elections in 2026.

Mississippi law, similar to that of 15 other states, allows for mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received by election officials up to five days later, then counted.

But the Republican National Committee is arguing in the Watson case, which was brought against the state of Mississippi in January 2024, that this procedure is not legal. An election, the argument goes, includes the receipt of ballots; therefore, all ballots must be in hand at the close of Election Day – the congressionally established “Tuesday after the first Monday” in November.

President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order 14248 similarly calls for ballots to be received no later than Election Day if they are to be counted, saying that doing otherwise “is like allowing persons who arrive 3 days after Election Day, perhaps after a winner has been declared, to vote in person at a former voting precinct, which would be absurd.”

The Supreme Court’s decision on mail-in ballots could have major consequences for the 47.6 million Americans who voted by mail in 2024, as well as more than 900,000 overseas military and civilian voters covered under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. More than 28 million of the 47.6 million domestic mail-in votes and nearly 800,000 of the 900,000 votes cast and counted under the uniformed and overseas citizens act were from states that allow for return of mail-in ballots after Election Day.

As a political scientist and scholar of migration, I have conducted research for over 20 years on military service members and civilian U.S. citizens living overseas.

Currently, 16 states plus the District of Columbia allow domestic absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive after Election Day; 29 states extend that right to military and civilian voters living overseas, recognizing that international mail often delays ballot return.

According to the U.S Constitution, states administer elections. Under the equal protection clause, however, the federal government can pass legislation to prevent inequalities in access to voting. This includes facilitating the right to vote of military service members and civilian U.S. citizens living overseas.

The Supreme Court will decide whether federal law overrides state election administration in determining whether ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive later can be counted.

A 250-year history

The history of absentee, or mail-in, ballots in U.S. elections stretches back 2½ centuries.

Soldiers first voted by mail during the American Revolution, when men from the town of Hollis, New Hampshire, wrote their town leaders asking to have votes counted in local elections.

Pennsylvania passed the first law allowing soldiers to vote absentee in the War of 1812, a right expanded in the Civil War when 19 Union and seven Confederate states allowed soldiers to vote absentee.

Absentee voting for soldiers from all states was codified in federal law in 1942. A 1944 amendment specified that ballots that were postmarked by Election Day and arrived within two weeks after Election Day could be counted.

Some civilians residing overseas, including civilian government employees and spouses and dependents of military and civilian employees, gained absentee ballot voting rights with the 1955 Federal Voting Assistance Act. All overseas U.S. citizens were enfranchised with the 1975 Overseas Citizens Voting Act. The 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act consolidated military and civilian voting rules. Later laws addressed electronic communications.

Over 1,000 military service members requested an absentee ballot in Mississippi’s 2024 election, along with nearly 1,000 civilian overseas voters. Nationally, more than 900,000 people voted in 2024 under the uniformed and overseas citizens act.

Many of these U.S. citizens would be affected by a ballot receipt deadline on Election Day. Their votes, coming from around the world, are often not able to be counted because of late arrival.

Under the magnifying glass in Florida

Overseas absentee military and civilian ballots came to widespread notice in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. That election – and ultimately the presidency — centered on state election law being waived by canvassing boards under pressure from the Republican Party to count military and civilian absentee ballots received after Election Day.

The Supreme Court decided in December 2000 to stop further counting of mail-in ballots received after Election Day because of tight certification deadlines, with the Electoral College meeting just six days later.

Congress was concerned about the unequal treatment of ballots at home and abroad in the 2000 election. To move toward addressing these concerns, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, which includes measures to facilitate overseas voting.

Ensuring that everyone gets a vote

Increasing mail-in voting has been a question of making sure everyone who qualifies to vote can do so. Oregon was the first state, in 1998, to offer mail-in voting. Surveys have shown that more Democrats than Republicans voted by mail in 2020. Sending ballots to all voters reduces that gap.

By 2020, 33 states offered “no excuse” domestic absentee voting, with others expanding or facilitating mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic that year.

The Federal Voting Assistance Program is charged with making it easier for overseas voters to vote. It continues to find obstacles, including problems in returning ballots on time. Meanwhile, Florida election supervisors in November 2025 requested that Florida officials reinstate a checkbox that was dropped from Florida absentee ballots in 2021. The checkbox allowed the voter to request an absentee ballot for the next election.

Mail-in ballot security

Following concerns about the security of mail-in ballots in the 2000 election in Florida, the 2002 Help America Vote Act required that all states have a minimum security requirement.

The multiple levels of scrutiny include signature comparison, ballot tracking and penalties for malfeasance from the moment of registration to ballot request, to ballot receipt. With these layers of security there were only an estimated four fraudulent votes cast for every 10 million mail-in ballots in the 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 U.S. general elections.

Mail-in voting elsewhere

The United States is one of 32 countries worldwide that allow mail-in voting for at least some of its citizens. These include the United Kingdom since 1945 and Germany since 1957.

In Germany’s federal elections in 2025, 37% of all voters, or 18.5 million citizens, cast a ballot by mail. German citizens who are eligible to vote automatically receive ballots. In the United Kingdom’s 2024 election, just under 5%, or nearly 1.3 million citizens, applied for mail-in ballots.

The bottom line

The Supreme Court case could reshape the voting landscape in the United States, potentially affecting 47 million people, including some 5 million military and civilian voters living abroad. Watson v. Republican National Committee could also affect laws in 29 states. The outcome of the case has the potential to make voting more difficult for millions of civilian and military voters at home and abroad.

Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced on Jan. 7, 2026, that it will cease all operations effective May 3. The daily newspaper, founded in 1786, has been the city’s paper of record for nearly a century and is one of the oldest newspapers in the country.

Block Communications, the company that owns the Post-Gazette, says the paper has lost “hundreds of millions of dollars” during the past two decades. The shuttering of the Post-Gazette comes after a three-year strike by newspaper employees who were asking management for better wages and working conditions. The strike ended in November 2025 after an appellate court ruled in favor of the union workers. The Post-Gazette was found to have violated federal labor law by cutting health care benefits and failing to bargain in good faith. Then, on Jan. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the paper, stating that the Post-Gazette was required to adjust its health insurance coverage for union members. Hours later, Block Communications announced that the paper would shut down.

Victor Pickard, an expert on the U.S. media and its role in democracy, was born and raised just outside Pittsburgh. He talked to Cassandra Stone, The Conversation U.S. Pittsburgh editor, about what the closing means for local journalism and democracy.

Newspapers have been in decline for decades. How significant is this closure?

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has long been a vital part of the local community throughout western Pennsylvania. This would be the first major metropolitan newspaper closing since the Tampa Tribune shut its doors in 2016, and it’s a devastating blow to residents in that entire area of the state. Block Communications also closed down the Pittsburgh City Paper, which is an alt-weekly newspaper in Pittsburgh, in January 2026. The loss of the Post-Gazette will likely create a major gap in local news coverage.

How much did the labor strike from 2022-2025 affect the newspaper’s profitability?

I wouldn’t pin the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s loss of profitability on the strike – which was legitimate and did have a profound impact – as much as on the structural forces affecting nearly all local newspapers at this time.

Throughout the country, local journalism increasingly is no longer a profitable enterprise. The core business model of being reliant on advertising revenue has irreparably collapsed, and subscriptions rarely generate enough financial support.

Since the early 2000s, the U.S. has lost about 40% of its local newspapers and about 75% of the jobs in newspaper journalism, according to a 2025 report from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. A study published last year by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack shows that in 2002, there were roughly 40 journalists per 100,000 people in the United States. Today, it’s down to about eight journalists.

This evisceration of local journalism leads to ever-expanding news deserts across the country, where tens of millions of Americans are living in areas with little or no local news media whatsoever.

How might this affect local civic engagement and democracy in Pittsburgh?

Democracy requires a free and functional press system. When a local newspaper closes, fewer people vote and get involved in local politics, and corruption and polarization increase.

Without local news outlets, people often turn to national news or even “pink slime” news sites. These sites masquerade as official local media institutions but in fact are often propagandistic outlets that amplify misinformation and disinformation.

With the retreat of newspapers, people are receiving less high-quality news and information. This means that people living in these areas are less knowledgeable about politics. They often don’t know who’s running for office in their communities, or what their political platforms are, and there’s just less civic engagement in general.

Most Americans have 24/7 access to unlimited news and information through their social media feeds, including local news influencers. Does this counteract the loss of local reporting?

I think an important distinction needs to be made between carefully reported and fact-checked articles and what seems like a glut of information at our fingertips at all times. Beyond the surface-level appearance of countless news sites, social media reports offer relatively few new facts that have been borne out of rigorous reporting.

You could say that Americans are living in a new golden age of political discourse, where we constantly see a churn of social media-based forms of expression. But that’s not necessarily journalism.

When we’re talking about the collapse of newspapers and fewer newspaper journalists working their beats, it would be an entirely different story if that journalism were being replaced by other institutions, by influencers, by podcasters. But many of those outlets are amplifying opinion-based commentary and punditry.

That’s not the same thing as reporting that adheres to journalistic norms and introduces new information into the world. Losing this kind of knowledge production hurts communities everywhere – from small towns and rural areas to major cities like Pittsburgh.

Victor Pickard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Foreign policy is usually discussed as a matter of national interests – oil flows, borders, treaties, fleets. But there is a problem: “national interest” is an inherently ambiguous phrase. Although it is often presented as an expression of sheer force, its effectiveness ultimately rests on something softer – the manner in which a government performs moral authority and projects credibility to the world.

The style of that performance is part of the substance, not just its packaging. On Jan. 4, 2026, on ABC’s This Week, that style shifted abruptly for the U.S.

Anchor George Stephanopoulos pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to explain President Donald Trump’s declaration that “the United States is going to run Venezuela.” Under what authority, Stephanopoulos asked, could such a claim possibly stand?

Rubio dodged the question. He just said that the United States would enact “a quarantine on their oil.” Venezuela’s economy would remain frozen, unable “to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interests of the Venezuelan people are met.”

Rubio’s point presumed authority rather than pausing to justify it. It was a diplomacy of dominance – coercion dressed up as concern. The unspoken assumption was pure wishful thinking: that “national interest” would immediately prevail, flowing smoothly in all directions.

As a historian of the early republic and the author of a biography of George Washington, I’ve been reminded these days of how Washington – amid harsh storms unlike anything the country faces today – forged a vision that treated restraint, not self-justifying unilateralism, as the truest measure of American national interest.

Acknowledging burdens and consequences

In the 1790s, the United States faced a world ruled by corsairs and kings. The Atlantic was not yet an American lake. Spain blocked its western river, the Mississippi. Britain still held forts on U.S. soil. Revolutionary France tried to recruit American passions for European wars. And in North Africa, petty “Regencies,” as Europe politely called them, seized American ships at will.

The young nation was humiliated before it was strong. George Washington understood that humiliation intimately. Independence had freed America from Britain, but not from the world.

“Would to Heaven we had a navy,” he confessed to the Marquis de Lafayette in 1786, longing for ships “to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.” But such a fierce wish never became Washington’s foreign policy. Visibility invited peril; peril required composure.

In 1785, two American merchant vessels – the Maria of Boston and the Dauphin of Philadelphia – were captured by Algerian cruisers. Twenty-one sailors were chained, stripped and sold into slavery. Their families begged the government to pay ransom. Negotiators proposed paying tribute, a kind of protection-in-advance payment system. The price kept rising.

President Washington refused to be rushed by either pity or anger. Paying the extravagant sum, he warned his cabinet in 1789, “might establish a precedent which would always operate and be very burthensome if yielded to.”

Precedent mattered to Washington. A republic must measure not only what it can afford, but what it will be forced to feel tomorrow because of what it pays today.

The Trump administration’s approach to Venezuela demonstrates the opposite instinct. It represents a readiness to take unprecedented steps without pausing to acknowledge their burden and consequences.

Washington feared that habit of nearsightedness in foreign affairs precisely because he believed it corrupted empires – and could corrupt republics as well.

Neutrality as ‘emotional discipline’

The storms soon multiplied.

By 1793, Europe was already “pregnant with great events,” Washington wrote to Lafayette. The French Revolution, welcomed at first as a triumph of “The Rights of Man,” slid into terror and general war.

Citizen Genet, the French envoy to the United States, landed in Charleston, South Carolina, and proceeded to enlist American citizens’ help in France’s war with Britain by commissioning privateers in U.S. ports to prey on British ships. Genet did not request permission to do this from Washington.

Gratitude to France – indispensable ally during the Revolution, provider of fleets, soldiers and hard-to-forget loans – clashed with alarm at her new demands. A single misstep could have dragged the United States into another catastrophic conflict.

And yet, Washington responded to Genet not with rashness and bravado but with restraint made public law.

The 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality insisted that the “duty and interest of the United States” required “a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers.” Neutrality was an emotional discipline – the only source of authority.

Friendliness: strategy, not concession

President Washington knew that the road to successful pursuit of national interests was paved with international credibility.

Washington wanted America “to be little heard of in the great world of Politics,” preferring instead “to exchange Commodities & live in peace & amity with all the inhabitants of the earth.”

The first president pitched the republic’s voice toward ordinary people rather than rival powers. He spoke of “inhabitants,” not foreign enemies. He treated restraint – not self-justifying unilateralism – as the truest measure of national interest.

Even when insulted or thwarted – by Spanish intrigues on the Florida frontier, by British seizures in the Caribbean, by pamphleteers accusing him of being a monarch in disguise – Washington’s tone remained measured.

On March 4, 1797, he would leave the presidency. His final creed was simple and devout: “My policy has been, and will continue … to be upon friendly terms with, but independent of, all the nations of the earth.”

For Washington, friendliness was a strategy, not a concession. The republic would treat other nations with civility precisely in order to remain independent of their appetites and quarrels.

Foreign policy as civic mirror

The statements from the Trump administration about Venezuela revive habits Washington once deplored: sovereignty managed through fear, pressure enforced by economic asphyxiation, domination smoothed over with promises of kindness. In this performance, U.S. interests function as a blank check, and restraint appears obsolete.

Yet foreign policy has never been only a ledger of advantage. It is also a civic mirror: the emotional register of a government that tells citizens what kind of nation is acting in their name, and whether it tries to balance national interest with responsibilities to others.

Washington believed America’s legitimacy abroad depended on patience and respect for the autonomy of others. The current approach to Caracas announces a different imagination: a power that boasts of quarantines, sets conditions – and calls the result partnership.

A republic must still defend its interests. But I believe it should also defend the temperament that made those interests compatible with independence in the first place. Washington’s America learned to stand among stronger powers without demanding to run them.

The question asked on “This Week,” then, is only the beginning.

The deeper question remains whether the United States will continue to perform power with the discipline of a constitutional republic – or surrender that discipline to the easy allure of what seems to only serve national interest, but fails to build credibility or relationships that endure.

Maurizio Valsania does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation