There is no more doubt: Ranked-choice voting will be used for the first time in a presidential election this year.
Voters in Maine will be allowed to list their candidates in order of preference, and its four electoral votes will only be awarded to those who get a majority's support, under a decision Tuesday from the state Supreme Court.
The ruling is a huge symbolic victory for advocates of ranked elections, who view them as a magic formula for improving democracy by reducing the major parties' influence, encouraging more consensus-building campaigns, promoting the prospects of outsiders — and guaranteeing winners can claim a mandate because they have been endorsed by most voters.
The justices unanimously rejected the state Republican Party's efforts to force a referendum in November on the future of so-called RCV in the state, the first to use the system in contests for many state offices and Congress. Under Maine's rules for a "people's veto," getting that measure on the 2020 ballot would have automatically prevented RCV's application in the contest among President Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden and three minor-party candidates.
Now, voters will be allowed to rank all of them. If no one is the top choice on most ballots, the candidate with the fewest No. 1 votes will be dropped and their votes will be redistributed to the No. 2 choices — that process continuing in a series of computer-driven runoffs until one of them (presumably Trump or Biden) has garnered majority backing.
Maine already does things differently. It's one of two states, with Nebraska, that awards two electoral votes to the statewide winner and one vote to the person who prevails in each House district.
Trump narrowly carried the rural 2nd District in 2016, but at first blush his chances of repeating that look to go down because of the use of RCV. Two years ago, the Republican holding that congressional seat secured the most first place votes but was defeated after the instant runoff system redistributed most of the ballots of the lesser candidates to Democrat Jared Golden.
Critics say the system is needlessly complex and can disenfranchise voters who don't understand it.
Maine's high court concluded the GOP had not gathered enough valid signatures on its ballot petitions, siding with Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, who had tossed out several thousand of the 67,00 names submitted this summer.
Acting two weeks after ballots with RCV for president started rolling off the presses, the justices reversed a lower court, which said the Republicans had met their burdenwith 22 signatures to spare. The issue in the case was a narrow one — whether two of the petition circulators were required to be registered voters in the town where they were doing their canvassing. The high court said yes.
"This is a powerful moment for ranked-choice voting supporters," Rob Richie of FairVote, one of the most prominent RCV advocacy groups, exalted after the court decision. "America was founded on the promise that your vote matters. We haven't always lived up to that promise, but over time, our nation's citizens strived to ensure that every vote counts."
The ruling puts Maine on course to rely on rankings in its presidential primaries starting in 2024. This year the Democrats used RCV in five presidential primaries and caucuses.
The number of cities using ranked-choice voting has more than doubled in the past decade and will be used to choose the mayor of New York next year. Voters in Alaska and Massachusetts will decide in November whether their states will also use RCV almost exclusively in the future.
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.