2016 Postmortem

This gamesmanship/lack of transparency seems impossible to address now, but I would have liked to see the Democrats do something about requiring paper ballots, setting up national standards when Obama came into office with the supermajorities.

It could have been sold to the public and would have been tough to oppose a genuine effort to make the process more transparent, maybe establish national standards for requiring random recounts in all states and all paper ballots. After the Florida butterfly ballot fiasco in 2000 and questions about manipulations against Kerry in Ohio in 2004, they should have taken the opportunity to do something about it.

If there are electronic machines with no paper backup, people will hack them, that's guaranteed. In the old days with Tammany Hall & Mayor Daley's Chicago, the Democrats were probably the best at manipulating votes, but this seems to be a Republican game now. There needs to be a national standard where the system can't be leaned on in the ways it is.