I look forward to any establishment figure working to reestablish trust in political institutions and media reportage.

Before the problem can be addressed it must be acknowledged. Unfortunately, so far I only see finger-pointing and deflection. As far as each respective side is concerned, there's no problem on their end and they have no responsibility. It is all the fault of the others. The only thing that is changing is the increasing intensity of outrage.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm very interested, especially given your perspective.

The 2004 election also had its fair share of electronic voting criticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_vo...

Sure,

What I saw was this. The voter file was completely inaccurate. It was very common to go to a residence where voters:

  a. had moved
  b. had died
  c. had multiple 12+ voters currently registered at one apartment address, none of whom live there.

From my perspective there are real issues with sending unsolicited mail in ballots to homes because the government does such a bad job managing the voter file. Often it is deliberately mismanaged because "purging" a file is a loaded political term. Who wants to be that guy who deletes voters?

Moreover, my role as a campaign staffer was to collect votes. Often, people would ask "what do I vote for?", and I would just point and tell them what to vote for. This is also common. It also feels unethical.

Based on this experience, I strongly support voting in person, with an ID.

Don't trust me. If you would like to see this for yourself, volunteer with a campaign (any party) and canvass an apartment building in a swing state.

> Based on this experience, I strongly support voting in person, with an ID.

Shhh, a view like this will get you banned from Twitter... ;)

It is not a popular view. You are required to say there are no issues, even though the issues can be experienced by anyone who participates in a campaign.

> The system is clearly breaking down today where 75% of Republicans do not trust the election results and 75% of Democrats didn't trust the 2016 election.

To the extent that's true, it has far less to do with voting machines than with self-selected information bubbles.

This was also an election where for months, everyone had nothing to do except sit around and consume filter-bubble news.

> ... sit around and consume filter-bubble news

That's a choice, and very much a part of the self-selection I spoke of.

Sort of, but when the world is inundated with the message that all in-person human interaction is icky and unpatriotic and living on social media is the compassionate thing to do instead, the result shouldn't be a huge surprise.

Do you have a source for the claim that 75% of Democrats didn't trust the 2016 election? While I've read reports about frustration with the electoral college among Hilary voters and a fear of election interference from foreign nations, I haven't read much about that level of suspicion of ballot-level fraud. I would push back on the idea that those concerns (which I don't feel qualified to speak on that true validity of) are equivalent to the idea pushed by Donald Trump that there was a scheme to legitimately steal the election, as in to produce a situation where the votes cast do not determine the winner.

> 75% of Republicans do not trust the election results and

If their mistrust is based on crazy, there's nothing that can be done to fix it except to cure that crazy.

And I think it's based on crazy: the reasoning seems to break down to: (A) belief that Donald Trump won implying (B) the election must be fraudulent (since it didn't confirm A).

It's been very interesting to observe because although I had heard the notion that malignant narcissists "can't accept ever losing" I realize I hadn't truly perceived what that entails. They invent an entire reality, Truman Show / The Matrix / Inception-style, where they didn't lose. And of course that alternative reality by definition has to feature some reason why there's a new dude in the WH now.