Maine will be the first state to use ranked-choice voting in a presidential election, because the Republican Party's attempt to block the alternative voting method has failed.
Secretary of State Matt Dunlap announced Wednesday that a petition drive to block the use of RCV for president this fall had come up 2,000 signatures short of the 63,000 ultimately required.
That amounts to a significant symbolic victory for those who view ranking elections as one of the best ways to bolster democracy, because the system tends to reduce partisan polarization and reward centrist candidates. Mainers have been in the vanguard of the effort to expand use of RCV, adopting it for virtually all contests four years ago and implementing it statewide in 2018, despite a handful of legal and legislative challenges.
Last month, when ballot petitions were due for submission, the state Republican Party reported it had collected 72,000 signatures. But state officials tossed 11,000 of them because they were not properly certified by the registrar or were duplicative.
But Maine GOP Chairwoman Demi Kouzounas said the fight is not over. "It is abundantly clear" that the secretary of state, a Democrat, "used every trick in the book to throw out enough signatures through a litany of technicalities to keep this question off the ballot," Kouzounas said.
Sufficient signatures would have ordered a referendum in November on whether to use ranked voting in future presidential contests — and suspended the use of the system this time.
Under RCV, voters rank as many candidates for each office as they like in order of preference. If no one is ranked on top of most ballots, the person with the fewest No. 1 votes is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed to the second-choice candidates. That process repeats in a series of "instant runoffs" until one candidates breaks the 50 percent threshold.
Had the petition drive succeeded, the state's four electoral votes would have been awarded to either President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden — even if neither has majority support, and without regard to whom supporters of third-party candidates would prefer as a backup.
Republican opposition to RCV has only grown as the voting method has gained more traction across the country. Conservatives were particularly up in arms about it two years ago, after GOP incumbent Bruce Poliquin lost in Maine's 2nd congressional district to Democrat Jared Golden.
Tuesday's three-way GOP primary to nominate Golden's opponent is now in limbo until election officials redistribute the 23 percent of ballots where the last-place finisher was the top choice.
The system's likeliest impact on the presidential race is in that same district. For the past half-century Maine has been unusual in awarding one electoral vote to the winner of each House district and two votes to the statewide victor. Biden can probably count on three votes, but Trump has a shot in the 2nd District (he won it four years ago) if no instant runoff is required.
RCV could also shape the tossup Senate race between GOP incumbent Susan Collins and her Democratic challenger, state House Speaker Sara Gideon.
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.