Leighninger is head of democracy innovation for the National Conference on Citizenship. Gifford is the founder and chief operating officer of ActiVote.
Many Americans aren’t confident about the choices they are making at the polls; as a result, some voters are making ill-informed decisions and others aren’t voting at all. In fact, roughly 50 percent of all the people who register never actually vote, and closer to 75 percent of those registered don’t vote in primaries and local elections. We would have higher turnout, and election results that better reflect what Americans want, if we put voters at the center of the process instead of treating them as the means to an end.
This was the overarching finding of the research on voter education we conducted this spring and summer. Our organizations, ActiVote and the National Conference on Citizenship’s Democracy Innovation Project, held focus groups and surveyed existing studies to find out if more customized, accessible, nonpartisan information would help voters. We asked focus group participants to use the ActiVote voter education tool, which allows people to compare how their policy views map with those of the candidates vying for their votes. The focus groups covered three different cohorts of voters: new voters, infrequent voters and “super voters.”
We had three more specific findings. First, voters don’t like to feel uninformed. “There are a lot of people that I vote for that I don't know who they are,” said one focus group participant. “I feel stupid every time I'm doing this.”
Theoretically, voters should be able to base their vote on what the candidates say they are going to do once in office, but voters have difficulty connecting their own policy views with candidate platforms. Another focus group participant said: “I realized how much I don’t know, especially about the bills and the policy kinds of questions. There's a lot of stuff going on, it's hard to keep track of.”
This is particularly true for local and state races. One focus group participant from Pennsylvania admitted, “The reason why I never vote locally is because I simply didn’t have the knowledge to do so.” Another Georgia participant stated: “ It takes so long to find the information that you do not have time to actually process the information.”
Many other studies have supported this finding. One example is the 100 Million Project about non-voting adults in America, which showed that voters do not have time to learn as much as they’d like about the candidates and the process. The more confidence voters have in the process and in the quality of their vote, the more likely they are to show up to the polls.
Second, voters are uncomfortable with the influence of partisanship on the information they receive. As one focus group participant put it, “The polarization that exists right now, it just feels very manipulating. Truth doesn’t seem to be the goal, right?” Many focus group participants talked about voting along party lines, or following the endorsements of organizations they support, as a fallback they were using to replace trusted, easily accessible information on candidates and issues.
When they saw a way to work through information together, the focus group participants recognized an opportunity to get past polarization. One participant felt, “The more people can delve into the issues and see where they really stand and see where candidates stand, the better. Hopefully that's helping people to understand it's not all about polarization. We can agree on some things.” Being able to see how their views compared with those of the candidates helped them focus more on values and policies and less on party.
Third, as people were better able to explore the information about issues and policies, they became more interested in voting on issues directly through opportunities like initiatives and referendums. Instead of “shoving Republicans or Democrats down our throats,” said one young voter, we should take an issue like infrastructure and say to people, “Look, our infrastructure needs help. Now you form your own opinion. How should the need be solved?”
This finding is supported by other research. Americans support practices and reforms that would give them a more meaningful say in public decisions. In one national opinion poll, Americans were asked about a list of possibilities for participatory democracy. Support for these ideas — including processes like participatory budgeting and citizen assemblies, which allow everyday people to contribute to policymaking — ranged from 75 percent to almost 90 percent, without significant differences between Republicans and Democrats.
Voting should not make people feel stupid — it should make Americans feel informed, connected and empowered. By providing more information, better ways to process that information and more opportunities to be heard on policy issues, we improve the way we elect candidates and make public decisions. If we want government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” we should spend more time and effort focusing on the people.
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.