Ross: Is there a way we can convince Americans to trust elections again?
Jan 12, 2021, 6:47 AM | Updated: 9:57 am
Workers at the Gwinnett County Georgia elections headquarters process absentee ballots for Georgia's Senate runoff election. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
(AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Let鈥檚 set aside the violence for a moment, which on the surface may seem ridiculous, but I want to consider that we can no longer trust elections.
We all accept that no election involving 156 million votes will be free of errors. But the people alleging fraud claim there were聽millions of bogus ballots. And that the judges and elections officials who dismissed those claims are all in on it.
So if elections are broken, how do we figure out the popular will? Could we trust opinion polls?
Well, of the 306 polls conducted since March 27, exactly five had Trump ahead. The most recent was a September Rasmussen poll that had Trump ahead by 1%.
What about going back to in-person voting? But those votes would still be counted by machines — do we trust that? Maybe personally hand in your ballot to an election official, and then watch while it鈥檚 counted? But they still have to be added up. Do we trust that, either?
Suppose we each got a code to track our ballots like Amazon tracks packages. But then that links you to your vote… and do you trust the website that says your vote was counted?
Maybe forget elections and just have people with clickers counting rally attendance? Please let me know what you鈥檇 trust!
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