As we turn the final pages on a tumultuous 2021, all this week The Fulcrum will share a year-end series of guest commentaries from a distinguished group of columnists on the current state of electoral reform and what we may expect in the upcoming year.
Rob Richie is president and CEO of FairVote.
For those seeking better elections and a more representative government in the United States, the coming year is a time of great promise and peril. We have a historic opportunity to advance comprehensive electoral reform, yet have much to lose if we fall short.
I’ve led FairVote since it launched in 1992, grounded in a vision of lifting up structural reform nationally while advancing change locally. Today’s increasingly fierce partisan divisions and deterioration of our core democratic institutions have energized volunteers, fostered national debate, unlocked resources and earned attention from policymakers as never before.
For FairVote, it’s always been important to ensure that every voter can cast a meaningful vote in every election, to embrace representing Americans’ diversity of thought and identity fairly, and to reward leaders for collaborative policymaking. What has broadened our movement is a sense of urgency about the problem and the promise of viable solutions. Major grantmakers like Unite America and the Hewlett and Arnold foundations deserve great credit, as do the many Americans who make a difference with their dollars and time.
FairVote already has catalyzed impactful major voting improvements. We’ve helped advance Electoral College reforms to ensure the candidate with the most votes always wins, curbs on partisan gerrymandering, voter registration for all eligible Americans, and state and local wins that have made ranked-choice voting today’s fastest-growing nonpartisan electoral reform in the country.
We have decided to zero in on a campaign to win our original reform priorities: normalizing the RCV ballot across the nation and changing winner-take-all elections for Congress. While deeply appreciative of those seeking other reforms and upholding voting rights, we see the congressional Fair Representation Act as the single most important long-term change to stabilize and strengthen our democracy. At the same time there’s much we must win along the way in states and cities.
Here are thumbnails on how 2021 was a historic year for our goals:
Eight bills in Congress supported RCV, from sweeping change as embodied by the Fair Representation Act to substantive provisions on RCV that passed the House in the For the People Act and the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
New York City experienced a remarkable RCV primary, with near-record turnout and a remarkable surge in diverse representation, including women more than doubling city council seats and people of color surging up and down the ballot.
Democrats and Republicans alike embraced a surge in new uses of RCV. Twenty Utah cities used RCV for the first time, and Virginia Republicans nominated their winning statewide ticket with RCV. Five more cities passed RCV at the ballot, and laws in Oregon and Colorado supported RCV's local expansion as part of a record 30 states with RCV bills. FairVote is thrilled to regularly work with reformers from nearly ever state.
Our voices in the press were heard as never before, including FairVote having two lengthy op-eds in The New York Times and appearing on CNN and the “CBS Evening News.” Our national and state allies were prominent voices for reform.
Looking forward to 2022
We must build on this progress. Here are some of FairVote's goals for 2022:
Reframing the challenges to our democracy: The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol embodied the partisan divisions that are breaking our system of government. American institutions are designed for elected leaders with different views to advocate for their interests, then accept compromise. But that approach isn’t working with two starkly distinct factions whose backers increasingly fear the other side as an existential threat.
Winner-take-all voting rules have never meshed well with our Constitution, but it’s a worse fit than ever given the greater sophistication of political operatives who know how to win elections by driving fear of the other side. The case for change should not be seen as a win-lose proposition with zero-sum logic. Rather, we must lift up the value of addressing conflict by expanding voices at the table by replacing winner-take-all, single-choice elections. Long-term success for the Fair Representation Act will depend on how well we make this case.
Winning and supporting RCV across cities and states: We see real chances to win statewide uses of RCV legislatively, and anticipate a viable ballot measure that features RCV in Missouri. Alaska is rightly getting support for a terrific rollout of its new RCV elections. Locally, FairVote and our allies seek to increase the number of cities using RCV tenfold to more than 500 by 2025. Nearly 30 cities held RCV elections in 2021, and state groups and grassroots-focused allies like Rank the Vote can accelerate that progress.
Growing and diversifying our movement: We have great leaders in our electoral reform space, but must recruit and elevate new voices that reflect America. Groups like RepresentWomen, More Equitable Democracy and Democracy Rising embody that goal nationally, but we must keep elevating new voices within our organizations and work with civil rights groups on expanding the proportional form of RCV as an effective voting rights remedy.
It’s thrilling also to see state groups building capacity. FairVote Minnesota, FairVote Washington and Democracy Maine are examples for all of us, along with state arms of Common Cause and the League of Women Voters. We can support and celebrate real chances for bipartisan wins for RCV in major states.
Advances in Congress for structural reform: What can be won in Congress remains unknown, given the intensity of partisan conflict. But let’s win one argument: There are times when Congress must act to establish national forms for fair voting and electoral structures. This need not be a partisan dispute, as the overwhelming support for the original Voting Rights Act and later updates has shown.
At a minimum, Congress should act to defend voting rights, fund accessible and secure elections, and provide support for states and cities adopting democratic innovations like RCV. To prevent another ugly round of gerrymandering, we must relax the winner-take-all stranglehold imposed by Congress on states through a 1967 mandate to use single-member districts.
FairVote’s goals depend on working in coalition with others. We thank the groups and people who make that possible, and prepare for 2022 with great anticipation.
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.