Perfection can haunt democracy, so let elections improve instead
A father’s advice after a bad basketball game frames the case that no election is flawless, but trust grows as officials find and fix flaws, and citizens can help by showing up.
By Rev. Terry Kyllo | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
I grew up in a town where basketball was a lot like it is in the movie “Hoosiers.” It was less a game than the town’s identity. My dad was the custodian, and almost every day he took me up to the gym for lessons and drills.
In high school, while I was on the varsity team, I had a really bad game. As always, Dad and I sat in the living room afterward and calmly went back over the game: the choices I’d made out there, and why. That night I teared up and told him how upset I was at how poorly I’d played.
He said, “Terry, sometimes perfection haunts you. I hope you can let that go, because everybody makes mistakes and has a bad day. Just relax and learn from it.”
Perfection haunts democracies, too. There is a voice in our public life right now that says if an election is not flawless, it cannot be trusted. That sounds like a high standard, but it is really a trap. No human system has ever passed that test, and none ever will.
Impossible standards breed distrust
A standard nothing can meet doesn’t make our elections better. It only gives us permission to stop trusting them. And it gets used from every direction. Some point to a glitch in a machine and call the result rigged. Others point to a long line and say the same thing. Most often, it is used by whoever just lost.
That doesn’t mean we deny our flaws. All of our traditions teach that no human being and no human system is perfect. Jews speak of teshuva and Muslims of tawbah, the turning back after we fall short.
Christians like me speak of confession and new life. None of these traditions teach that a person who falls short should be thrown away. They teach that falling short is where growth begins.
Our elections work the same way. Imperfection is not a sign that a system is broken and can be discarded. It is an invitation to make the system one step better, as we have for generations.
Imperfections lead to improvements
Through much of the 19th century, voters got their ballots from their own political parties, and that led to accusations of ballot fraud and vote buying. Taking a cue from Australia, Louisville and Massachusetts adopted the secret ballot in 1888, and by the turn of the century 38 states had followed.
That reform had a flaw of its own: Some Southern states paired it with literacy requirements meant to keep Black citizens from voting. A later generation took up that injustice and passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
After the disputed 2000 election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act to replace punch card voting, with large majorities from both parties, and President George W. Bush signed it in 2002.
Then another flaw emerged: Many of the new machines left no paper record. Election officials went back to work. By 2024, the Brennan Center estimated that about 98 percent of votes were cast on paper, which means a voter can check their ballot and officials can count it again by hand.
In 2017, Colorado became the first state to run a statewide risk-limiting audit. Philip Stark, the statistician behind the method, describes it this way: You start by assuming the reported winner didn’t really win, and then you check paper ballots until the evidence shows otherwise.
Bipartisan teams compare randomly selected ballots against the machine count. After that first audit, Colorado’s elections director, Judd Choate, said openly that they had found several areas where they could improve.
Here we see leaders of the system looking for imperfections on purpose in order to strengthen it.
Elections are not based on ‘faith alone’
Because it is a human system, it will never be perfect. So in the United States we don’t trust elections on faith alone. We trust them because of the laws, procedures and checks and balances built into the system.
We trust them because they are run by thousands of local election offices, staffed by our neighbors and watched by people from every party. And we trust them because, over time, we have made them better.
When Republicans and Democrats sat down together in Braver Angels workshops, they agreed on a simple standard: Voting should be easy, and cheating should be hard. That is a goal we keep moving toward, not a finish line we have already crossed.
So here is my ask. Between now and Election Day, be part of the next step. Sign up to be a poll worker. Call your county elections office and ask when its canvass or audit is open to the public, then go watch. And when you hear someone say an election must be perfect to be trusted, ask a better question: Are mistakes being found, and are they being fixed?
My dad never told me that the bad game didn’t count, and he never told me to quit. He sat with me, looked honestly at what happened, and sent me back to the gym. Our elections deserve the same: honest eyes, steady hands and people who keep showing up. Perfection will always try to haunt us. We can let it go, and get back to work.
FāVS News uses professional journalists and thoughtful commentary to explore faith, values and ethics. Support journalism like this by making a tax-deductible donation. FāVS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. © FāVS News. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted only to authorized media partners or with written permission.
