On this very terrain, four years ago, I asserted that we can “never again” allow an election like 2020 to happen. I’m back to say that despite Trump’s near landslide, America’s election system is still broken.
And the time to fix it is immediately, while President Trump has the wind at his back with a Republican Congress and the public on his side.
You most clearly see a broken election system when the margins are extremely tight. We saw it in 2020 when approximately 40,000 votes in key states tipped the election, and not so much in 2024. But rest assured, the public still lacks confidence in the integrity of our elections, and rightly so. They are only partially transparent. The tools to cheat are still on the table and able to be used. This is a ticking time bomb that could throw America into chaos in a future close election.
The main problems are ridiculously extended voting periods, mass absentee ballots, lack of voter ID, flimsy signature verification, unsecured drop boxes, voting machines with opaque software and connectivity to the internet, and sloppy, inaccurate voter rolls. We wouldn’t accept any of these third-world standards in our personal banking or accounting practices – why are we OK applying them to our precious votes?
Under our Constitution, we entrust election administration to the states. Some, like Florida, run a tight, efficient ship, counting all votes on Election Day in a few hours and posting ballot movement online in real-time. The public trusts those results. Others, like Arizona, have created a bizarre process that takes days to count the ballots. Even if there is no fraud whatsoever, the public is distrustful of such a Byzantine system. It boggles the mind that in 2024, in the United States of America, we are still counting votes days and even weeks after the election in Arizona and several other states.
The incoming Trump administration must make election integrity a top priority through federal legislation or persuading states to pass reforms. Standards such as voter ID, accurate and transparent voter rolls, and shortened voting periods should be emphasized publicly and perhaps incentivized by the federal government. There are constitutional issues at play here, but there are countervailing constitutional issues when blue states affect federal elections by relaxing their standards to enable cheating.
We are at a crossroads. More people are using absentee ballots and getting used to them. However, as the Commission on Federal Election Reform, headed by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, concluded in 2005, mass absentee ballots invite voter fraud. Many other civilized countries agree – they ban them or sharply limit their use.
Like with money or other valuables, flawed human beings will steal them if you don’t provide strict guardrails and safeguards. In one-party areas without oversight, partisans will be tempted to break the rules and steal votes if they think they can get away with it.
Part of the reason there were fewer voting irregularities in 2024 compared to 2020 is that our organization and others dispatched tens of thousands of lawyers and volunteers to keep an eye on things. And, of course, it helped that the margin was “too big to rig” this time.
Let’s act to close the gaping security holes so we can spend more time debating the issues rather than paying hundreds of lawyers. Our great country deserves a great election system. It is within our power to make it happen in 2025.
