Voters are evenly split on whether Massachusetts should become the second state to conduct most elections using ranked-choice voting, a decision they will make in November.
With 36 percent for the switch and 36 percent against it, 28 percent remain undecided in a poll released Tuesday — mainly because they are confused by the alternative election method or haven't yet tried to figure it out.
The numbers don't augur well for proponents of ranked elections, because support for ballot measures tends to fade as Election Day nears. At the same time, there's minimal organized opposition to bringing co-called RCV to the state, giving advocates continued hope of winning over the skeptical or ignorant in the next dozen weeks.
"I wouldn't be discouraged if I were a proponent because there is a lot of time and there's nobody making ... strong, well-funded counterarguments," Evan Horowitz of the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University told WBUR, the public radio station in Boston that commissioned the poll. "But I do think it's a reason to kind of reassess how much outreach has to be done."
The Yes on 2 campaign — which has bipartisan leadership headlined by former Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick and former Republican Gov. Bill Weld — says it's raised more than $2 million to push the referendum and will launch its advertising campaign after Labor Day.
Advocates argue the system produces more consensus-driven politicians, tamps down negative campaigning, weakens the polarized red-blue hold on elective offices and boosts the prospects of womenand candidates of color. The poll suggests that none of those arguments has won over the electorate yet.
"On each one of these things, you see a lot of people saying either 'It will make no difference to that' or 'I don't know whether it would,' " said Steve Koczela of MassINC, which conducted the poll of 501 likely voters last weekend. (It had a 4.4-percentage-point margin of error.)
The measure would switch primary contests and general elections for Congress, statewide executive positions, the Legislature and some countywide posts to RCV starting in 2022. Neighboring Maine is the only other state where the system is in such wide use, but it's also being used for local elections in a score of cities across the country — with New York joining the list next year.
Massachusetts, however, was in the vanguard of ranked elections because the city council and school board of Cambridge has used the system since 1941.
In RCV contests, voters are permitted to list candidates in order of preference. One who receives a majority of the top rankings wins outright. Otherwise, the one with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, those ballots are redistributed based on their second place designations, and this "instant runoff" process repeats until one candidate has a majority of support.
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.