There’s a simple way to get around the increasingly difficult problem of ensuring that votes for President are not cast fraudulently, or that legitimate votes are not miscounted. We just need to go back to what the Constitution says in Article 2, Section 1:
Each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.
In other words, state legislatures can appoint Electors in the same way they used to appoint Senators. Allowing the residents of a state to vote for Electors directly (and thus for President indirectly) is — depending on how you look at it — either a courtesy or an abdication of responsibility, but it’s not a requirement.
Apart from a return to the clear intent of the Constitution (it’s the states, not the people, who elect a President), this would provide other important benefits as well.
First, with roll-call votes in the legislatures, there would be absolutely no openings for voter fraud, or miscounting.
Second, it would eliminate opportunities to obsess over discrepancies between the electoral and popular vote counts, as there would be no popular vote to count.
Third, it would effectively remove money as an issue in Presidential campaigns in a way that could never be achieved through the usual arcane, irrelevant, and easily-skirted attempts to impose ‘transparency’ on campaign spending.
Fourth, it would vitiate the ability of social media giants and traditional media conglomerates to manipulate a Presidential election through favoritism, censorship, and other shenanigans.
And all we’d have to do is follow the Constitution. What a concept.