Never has so simple a phrase been so tortured in meaning among political factions. Talk to the left and they will scream about the right’s suppression of people having access to voting as if the KKK and Jim Crow laws of the slave South still rule the election roost. The right rails about massive machine manipulation that makes voting at all seem moot. Both sides do a lot of jabbering about the evils of the Other, and yet no one addresses the election reality we now face.

Here it is. Our election system today looks nothing like it did a few short decades ago. The biggest departure has been the elimination of having a single day for voting, and a single night for counting those same votes. The addition of time to our elections has turned it from the single event it once was into a long process. Like the processed meats that are squeezed out from a tube and bear little resemblance to actual meat in appearance or nutritional value, our current system bears little resemblance to secure elections of the past.

That is not to say there were never any election shenanigans before. That means fraud, in case you didn’t realize. Things have gotten so bad that just saying fraud can be a dangerous thing to do, something to be said in hushed tones and only in back alleys. Fraud. There, I’ve said it. Fraud happens. Still no lightning strike. There have been past election scandals, and plenty of them. There may be things that Americans feel are too important or too sacred to be violated, but elections are not one of them. No side can cast the first stone.

Currently the left asserts with sledgehammer force that there is no widespread fraud while the right sees fraud everywhere all the time. No one can win that argument. Ironically, you can always tell who’s recently won from which side of that argument they are on.

The question of fraud should be one of accessibility. Just like you wouldn’t carry water in a sieve and expect to arrive anywhere with water, you shouldn’t hold elections where there are many holes and gaps, opportunities and mechanisms for fraud to take place and expect to get to an accurate and fair result.

We want fair and reliable election outcomes. We want to know the winner actually has the majority of citizen support and therefore got the most votes. We should know that every citizen has the opportunity to hear from each and every candidate in an unbiased way. We should be confident that every citizen has an equal opportunity to vote, but that only citizens do, no one else. We want everyone to have the chance to register to vote but also have clean voter rolls. We should provide simple but reliable voter ID for anyone eligible and then require it for every vote cast. There must be fast, transparent counting of valid ballots that can be securely re-verified later as needed. Dare I dream.

What we have is a giant multi-colored sieve. In some places, all ballots are cast by mail, in others the vast majority are cast by mail and still others next to none by mail. Some require signature and photo ID, others do not. Some have live signature verification, others use adjustable machine-based signature verification, and still others no verification at all. Some must be dated, others not. Some can be counted before election day, others cannot be counted until election day or only after the polls close. Some can even be counted days later. Any verification at all is of the envelopes only. Those are quickly separated from their ballots and cast aside, making no further verification possible. Mail-in ballots can arrive before election day, on election day or after election day depending on jurisdiction, making a fair, fast and efficient outcome impossible.

Voting in person can be done on various specific days leading up to election day or only on election day, or a month prior to election day. Sometimes ballots must be cast only at a predetermined official location or at various locations, again depending on the jurisdiction. Some votes can be stuffed into unwatched drop boxes far from the official voting location. We have some votes cast on machines only, others on paper run through machines but tallied from electronic records only and others done by paper only and hand counted at one location, then recorded and tallied electronically later. Some votes are counted right where they were cast, others boxed or bagged and driven to another location first, sometimes in the dead of night. Nothing inspires confidence like an unmarked van pulling into a dark parking garage at 3:00 am. and unloading boxes of ballots. Good thing we have professionals to handle all this. Oh, wait, we don’t. It’s a dog’s breakfast.

Then there are the machines. Electronic machines and the internet are involved in all aspects of elections. Machines to register voters, machines to track voters, machines to take votes directly, machines to process and record paper ballots, machines to check signatures, machines to count votes and machines to transmit results. These are machines, and not very sophisticated ones at that. Are these perfect machines? There is no such thing. Even the best, most advanced and most secure machines have glitches and get hacked. Ask a bank insider how much computer theft happens. Ask any retail clerk in a busy store how often machines go down or just don’t work right. We hear the mantra, not connected to the internet, over and over. And yet, we have cloud-based voter rolls, cloud-based tallies of votes and transmissions of results. Where do you think that happens?

The America of the 21st century uses machines that are not uniform, are often security tested to twenty-year-old standards, if at all. In computer time that is horse and buggy era. To top it off the machines are proprietary black boxes no official can inspect. If anyone tells you electronic machines are 100% safe and secure, laugh right in their face. That is why a number of countries have ditched machines and gone back to paper and hand counts.

I can’t talk about the wide variations and numerous mechanisms of elections without nearly going into a tailspin of confusion. That, I believe, is the point.

Of course, actually having fair and free elections assumes that everyone wants the free and fair elections all sides wave as their banner. I’m not so sure. If that were true, wouldn’t we have solved elections long ago? Wouldn’t we have banished the billions of dollars that are secretly or overtly injected into elections and that unequivocally tilt them off an even and fair keel? Couldn’t we figure a way to eliminate the massive money that makes politics a rich man’s game and government an aristocracy? Wouldn’t we have made elections simple and completely transparent so that even a child could see and know that they were fair?

Free and fair elections are much like the government overspending and the forever wars everyone says must stop.

I’m still waiting.

And that’s the simple truth.