Hawaii's first all-mail-in election produced the highest turnout in the state in almost a quarter century, with 51 percent of registered voters casting ballots for Saturday's election.
Last year, long before the Covid-19 pandemic made the push toward voting from home a national phenomenon, Hawaii decided to become the fifth state to conduct all elections almost entirely through the mail — joining Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Utah. Part of the aim was to reverse some of the worst voter participation rates in the country.
The result was that Hawaii's turnout was its highest since 1996. Officials say the simplicity of the new system was a factor — but so were a competitive congressional contest, frustration with aspects of the state's response to the coronavirus and a wave of competitive races borne of the rise of the Native Hawaiian protest movement.
Of the more than 406,000 votes in the primaries, just 1.3 percent of them (an estimated 5,500) were cast in person.
The turnout might grow in the days ahead. About 2,500 envelopes were not signed or had a signature that didn't match one on file. Those voters will be given until the end of this week to correct, or "cure," their mistakes — an aspect of the state's new rules that voting rights groups have sued to implement in a handful of battleground states on the mainland.
Election officials started mailing out ballots almost a month ago. Those received by Saturday night will get counted.
Hawaiians have a historical preference for absentee voting; 83 percent of ballots cast in the 2014 primary came through the mail, for example. That prompted a switch to all-mail elections in rural areas as a pilot program two years ago and, when that was hailed as a success, the Legislature last year voted to implement mail-in voting statewide.
The turnout in the system's debut actually bested primary participation in the three states where mail voting has been around longest: Washington, Oregon and Colorado all saw about 43 percent turnout this year.
The premier primary was for the Democratic nomination to succeed Tulsi Gabbard, who decided to give up her seat in Congress while running for president. The contest in the deep blue House district, which takes in all of the state outside Honolulu, was won by state Sen. Kai Kahele.
The state's four electoral votes are a lock for former Vice President Joe Biden. Democrats have carried the state in eight straight presidential contests; Hillary Clinton's margin of nearly 32 percent four years ago was her largest in any of the states she won.
Turnout that year was less than 35 percent, the lowest of any state.
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.