As New York City prepares to use ranked-choice voting for the first time next week, momentum for the reform continues to build in other parts of the country.
The country's most populous city will use ranked-choice voting in at least four special elections for city council in the coming months, but the real test will be the hotly contested mayoral primaries in June.
Outside of the Big Apple, more than two dozen states have active campaigns advocating for ranked-choice elections. Following successes in Alaska and six cities across the country in 2020, more jurisdictions than ever before are considering making the switch to RCV.
In fact, campaigns were just announced in two more states. Better Ballot South Carolina kicked off this week, and Better Ballot Alabama will officially start in mid-February. Both are being advised by the national nonprofit Rank the Vote, which launched last year and has pro-RCV affiliates in 18 other states.
"Our mission is really to help people learn how to effectively organize themselves to educate other folks in their state about ranked-choice voting and build a community of people that are excited about the reform," said Nathan Lockwood, managing director of Rank the Vote.
Under this alternative voting system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. In the case that no candidate receives majority support, the election goes into an instant runoff in which the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and that person's support is redistributed to voters' second choices. This continues until one candidate crosses the 50 percent threshold.
Supporters of RCV say the voting reform will deter negative campaigning and bolster more consensus-driven politics, while also boosting the election prospects of women and people of color. Opponents argue the system is confusing and doesn't necessarily lead to better representation.
Ahead of RCV's debut in New York, members of the City Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus and other community organizations sued to delay its implementation, arguing city officials didn't have enough time to educate voters about the new system. But a state judge ruled last month the city could move forward with ranked-choice voting because a delay would disenfranchise military voters.
Rob Richie, CEO of FairVote, one of the leading ranked-choice voting advocacy organizations, said the voter education campaign in New York has been really robust, both among RCV advocates and the city government. It will likely take a few weeks for the results of NYC's upcoming elections to finalize, though, due to the state's process for counting absentee ballots.
"That's always nerve-wracking when you're trying to introduce a new system," Richie said. "But I am impressed by the local folks on the ground." He added that FairVote is partnering with Common Cause's New York chapter to conduct exit surveys on voters' experiences using ranked-choice voting.
RCV will premier in another state in 2022: Alaska. In last year's election, a narrow majority of voters approved a sweeping democracy reform ballot measure that included adopting RCV for all statewide elections — making Alaska the second state to do so after Maine. Massachusetts had a similar ballot measure last year, but it failed to garner enough support.
Now, following the 2020 election and with state legislative sessions starting, advocates are gearing up to push for ranked-choice voting in several other states.
In Utah, a Republican lawmaker is sponsoring legislation to adopt RCV for primary elections with more than two candidates. In Vermont, former Gov. Howard Dean is leading a campaign to bring the voting reform to Burlington, the state's largest city. And in Austin, Texas, voters may get the chance to decide whether RCV should be used for future mayoral and city council elections.
And on the federal level, advocates are hoping to get more momentum behind legislation that would promote the use of ranked-choice voting, such as the sweeping democracy reform bill known as HR 1. Another bill, dubbed the Fair Representation Act, would go further by requiring all elections for the House of Representatives to use RCV. That bill, introduced in 2019 but not yet in this Congress, would also establish multi-member districts in each state.
Richie said he thinks the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is evidence of the country's deep polarization and will spur more conversations about voting reform this year.
"I think it's really got people thinking about why representatives act the way they do," he said. "And a lot of that is baked into the current ways we vote and the current ways we pick winners and the incentives that are created by that."
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.