It’s time to be truthful about the current state of American elections, a venerable institution foundational to our form of government, currently the subject of an unprecedented onslaught against its accuracy.

The reality is that the system is reliable at present, but it is creaky. It needs innovation to keep up with technology. More than anything else, it needs reimagining and a vision for the future rather than the incremental refinements it now receives.

The system works just fine, for now. Despite the overheated political attack rhetoric, no concrete evidence of systemically unreliable election results has been produced. None of the over 100  lawsuits filed before the 2024 elections alleging serious flaws yielded an iota of evidence, nor a contested election. Nor did any of the 64 post-2020 election cases challenging the presidential outcome turn up evidence of the alleged systemic fraud.

Yet those who have administered an election or kicked open the hood in a post-election recount, contest or audit know there is need for improvement. All the political tumult should serve as a catalyst for a long overdue reimagining of the election system to produce a blueprint for the future.

Many of the current system’s fundamentals have not been comprehensively reimagined since its creation more than 200 years ago. We had 13 colonies, much less than universal suffrage and only a handful of people who cast ballots. Its foundation is a two centuries’ old policy choice that elections should be run at a very local level. That has yielded such uneven growth that there is not even universal agreement on the number of actual voting jurisdictions in the country (all agree the number is above 8,000 but estimates have ranged to over 10,000).

Having so many jurisdictions guarantees, if for no other reason than human nature, inconsistencies for voters in different jurisdictions. Those differences in personnel, systems and equipment naturally give rise to questions of fairness and equal protection.

Yet one size does not fit all in elections. Heavily populated urban and suburban areas should not always have to operate the same way as small towns with different populations and population densities. The number of polling places and hours to vote can and should vary. Voters in different states elect legislators who can and should make policy choices based on their own states and jurisdictions’ needs. But more in-state uniformity would go a long way to ensuring equal opportunities while recognizing principles of federalism. That might include a discussion in some states about reducing the number of jurisdictions with control over elections. And it should include whether states require their jurisdictions to use the same voting equipment to provide equal opportunities for all voters.

The vision for the election system of the 2040s can take many different forms. In addition to exploring the benefits of in-state consistency, central topics for reimagination would include:

• The design of future voting systems and how and where voters should cast their ballots, with an examination of whether internet voting can be made sufficiently secure for states to entertain its use.

• How to ensure a steady funding stream to incorporate technological improvements that can be used in the casting, counting and certification of votes.

•  Research and development projects that will design modern vote casting and tabulation equipment and methods of best maintaining the voter rolls. Current equipment has not kept up with technology, in part because of the localized administration system and in part because of insufficient and episodic funding.

•  The United States is a mobile society and voter rolls are not systematically and uniformly kept accurate. Coordination between the 50 states in checking their rolls to prevent dual voting registrations and voting is needed.

• The redesign of polling place locations and layouts to help with efficiency and uniformity.

• As cyber threats grow and artificial intelligence becomes integrated into all facets of life, the election system needs better cyber protections.

Today’s elections are reliable but the onslaught against them should provide a catalyst for imagining what they should look like in the future. The bottom line is that putting on elections is a real time challenge and the status quo or even incremental changes to the current system will not result in a system sufficient to engender the needed reliability for elections in 20 to 30 years.