Voters across America are warming up to the notion of an alternative election system, with the midterms resulting in expansion of ranked-choice voting. And RCV’s proponents head into Thanksgiving feeling good about the state of reform in America.
November voting saw RCV initiatives triumph in Nevada, Seattle and a number of other notable cities across America.
“We saw another good run on the ballot,” said Rob Richie, CEO of the election reform group FairVote. “We’re just doing our year end communication to supporters and I just genuinely feel really optimistic.”
In Nevada voters approved a ballot initiative proposing a change to ranked-choice voting for state and congressional elections (but not for presidential contests), with 52.8 percent in favor. However, the state requires such changes to go through a second round of approval, so there will be another vote in 2024. If that measure is adopted, it will also institute an open primary in which all candidates appear on one ballot with the five candidates who capture the most votes advancing to the RCV general election. The earliest RCV could be implemented in Nevada would be the 2026 midterm election.
In another two-part decision, Seattle voters were asked whether they would prefer ranked choice voting or approval voting, a system that allows voters to support as many votes as they prefer. A big majority (76 percent to 24 percent) answered that they would prefer RCV, but a second question asked Seattle voters whether they even want to make a change. The nearly complete totals show 51 percent opted to reform the city’s primary election system, although the results have yet to be certified.
Other cities – including Portland, Ore.; Portland, Maine; Ojai, Calif.; and Evanston, Ill. – also adopted RCV this year.
While local organizations were heavily involved in many of these campaigns, FairVote has been a leader at the national level. The nonpartisan organization advocates for ranked-choice voting and multimember representation (unless the current congressional system in which each House district has one lawmaker). The group hopes to see RCV implemented in 10 presidential primaries by 2024.
Richie, is “very optimistic” about the future of ranked-choice voting. In 1992, he deteremind RCV is the best way to mitigate a lack of representation in Congress and the growing polarization between the two-party system.
FairVote and its allies have had some other big wins heading into the 2022 elections. New York City approved a move to RCV for municipal elections in 2019, and that system debuted two years later.
Richie also pointed to Alaska, which became the second state to adopt RCV for federal and state elections in 2020. Voters in Alaska got to try out the system for the first time this year, and it led to notable outcomes, including divided government. Democrat Mary Peltola, won an RCV special election earlier this year to become the first Alaska Native elected to Congress. She is now waiting for the second round of counting to determine whether she will defeat former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin a second time and earn a full term in the House.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, is also under 50 percent after the first round of counting but is expected to win reelection once the last place candidate is eliminated.
Richie noted that Alaska “will be governed by a bipartisan coalition” — an outcome that stemmed from RCV and its ability to “create incentives for the candidates to not be so driven by party labels but to reach beyond their base and make a case for themselves.”
Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, is an alternative system in which voters rank multiple candidates by preference instead of voting for a singular candidate. In most elections across the country, winners of the election are the individuals who earn the most votes. However, RCV candidates only win if they get more than 50 percent of votes. If no candidates receive a majority, the candidate with the fewest is eliminated and their ballots will go to each voter’s second-choice. This continues until there is an outright winner.
The system had been in use long before New York and Alaska adopted it. It began gaining wider traction in 2016 when Maine made the switch for its gubernatorial, legislative and congressional elections.
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.