Republicans believe they have gathered sufficient support from Mainers to stop the nation's first use of ranked-choice voting for president this fall.
Maine is the only state in the country that uses the alternative election system for all its elections, but since that decision was made four years ago the process has faced a succession of lawsuits and legislative drives to limit its reach or abandon it outright.
The nationwide debut of so-called RCV in a presidential election had been set for the next awarding of Maine's four electoral votes. But on Monday the state GOP submitted 72,000 signatures, about 4,000 more than required, on a petition mandating something else: a referendum in November on whether to use ranked voting in future presidential contests, which would mean it would not get used this time.
The effort, Maine GOP Executive Director Jason Savage said, "has always been about restoring the sanctity of our election process, preserving the bedrock American principle of 'one person, one vote.'"
Democrats dispute that argument, and are joined by a growing chorus of good-government groups and democracy reform advocates in advocating for RCV as a way to produce more consensus-driven politics and eliminate the notion that candidates who aren't in red or blue uniforms will always be spoilers.
Under RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference, and if no one is No. 1 on a majority of ballots then secondary choices come into play in a series of instant runoffs until one candidate emerges with more than 50 percent support.
Republicans have never much liked RCV but have been vigorously fighting it since 2018, when the method proved dispositive in a congressional contest for the first time — with the GOP incumbent, Bruce Poliquin, losing to Democrat Jared Golden after first-place votes for minor candidates were redistributed.
This year's referendum is known as a people's veto. If the signatures are verified by the secretary of state in the next 30 days, the referendum that goes on the ballot would not address the continued use of RCV in the state's other races — this year headlined by Golden's tight bid for a second term and a tossup Senate contest between GOP incumbent Susan Collins and Democratic state House Speaker Sara Gideon.
But the state GOP says that if Mainers back out of using RCV for president, a campaign to repeal the system statewide will be launched immediately in the Legislature. Those prospects look dim so long as Augusta remains in Democrats' control.
Recent history suggests RCV could alter this year's presidential results. Hillary Clinton carried the state with a 48 percent plurality in 2016, meaning an instant runoff would have happened, but her 22,000 margin over Donald Trump statewide was less than the 38,000 votes for Libertarian Gary Johnson. There's no clear data about who would have won most of Johnson's second-place votes.
Trump also carried one of the House districts with 51 percent, securing him a single Maine electoral vote because the state's allocations are different from the winner-take-all rules almost everywhere else.
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.