Thoughts on a Turbulent Election

I've lived most of my adult life in California, which has a history of relatively clean elections (except for San Francisco, back in the 50's), and so I've missed much of the cynicism that many of my peers who grew up in places like Chicago and Cleveland may have.

But the level of concern and scrutiny around voting are higher than ever. As I've said, that's a not necessarily really bad thing, if it leads us to better processes and more transparency. Refs in football and baseball and line judges in tennis blew calls before instant replay; in the modern era of television and computerized scrutiny, I'll say that the quality of refereeing in major sports has gone up because we can replay the serve or the tag at home and see whether the ref erred. Transparency and auditability count.