FairVote, a nonpartisan organization, recently announced that election day 2023 was an historic election year for ranked choice voting (RCV). Ranked choice voting is the fastest-growing nonpartisan voting reform in the nation; with recent ballot wins, it has won 27 city ballot measures in a row.
Ranked choice voting, sometimes known as instant runoff voting, gives voters the option to rank candidates in order of preference, first, second, third and so forth. Ranked-choice voting advocates say it will help prevent the increasingly polarized election campaigns, increase the number of women and minority candidates running for office, and reduce negative campaigning.
Three cities in Michigan – Kalamazoo, East Lansing, and Royal Oak – voted to adopt RCV. 71 percent of Kalamazoo voters, 52 percent of East Lansing voters, and 51 percent of Royal Oak voters voted for RCV. Add to this that both Minnetonka, MN and Easthampton, MA voted to keep or expand RCV and you have a clean sweep for ranked choice voting this past election day
RCV was used successfully in eleven cities across six states, including for the first time in Boulder, CO. Ten more cities will use RCV this month, when Utah holds its Election Day on November 21.
“Election Day 2023 showed once again that voters want ranked choice voting,” said Deb Otis, Director of Research and Policy at FairVote. “American voters are dissatisfied with our politics, and in 27 city ballot measures in a row, they’ve said ‘yes’ to better choices, better campaigns, and better representation. Everywhere it’s used, voters like and understand RCV, taking advantage of the opportunity to vote honestly and express more choices. We’ll continue this progress later this month in Utah and again in 2024, when at least Oregon and Nevada will vote on adopting RCV statewide and five states and territories are poised to use RCV for their presidential primaries.”
Ranked choice voting continues to grow across the nation, moving from just ten cities in 2016 to approximately 50 cities, counties, and states now (including the states of Alaska and Maine).
Larry Diamond, the former director of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law has concluded that ranked-choice voting is the most promising reform to democratize and depolarize politics in America.
“We are really settling on ranked-choice voting as the most promising reform to democratize and depolarize our politics. I think it’s not only here to stay but that it’s gaining support across the country. A lot of research shows that when you, as a candidate, go negative, you hurt public perceptions of yourself, but you do more damage to your opponent, and in plurality elections, this tradeoff can pay off,” says Diamond, the Stanford researcher. “But since candidates are forced to rely on second and third-place votes in ranked-choice elections, negative campaigning can open the way for a third candidate to gain support. It becomes much more costly to go negative since you risk losing your ability to pick up second-preference votes, and it actually does more harm than good,”
As more and more cities and states adopt ranked choice voting, we’ll learn quickly whether RVC is indeed paying dividends to lessen polarization in America.
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.