If an election can be stolen, it will be stolen!

People have been trying to steal elections for as long as elections have existed. If an election consisted of putting a colored stone in a bowl, someone would try to figure out how to get extra red stones in the bowl or how to remove some of the blue ones. My point is not that the fixing of elections is okay since everybody does it and always has. It is that, if there is a way to steal an election, it WILL BE DONE. Many people have demonstrated the ease with which electronic voting and tabulating machines can be hacked. To know that the opportunity to steal an election exists without realizing the certainty of the theft is naivete in the extreme.

Is it realistic to assume a group of people loyal to one political party would design a system where they could cheat with impunity and then not take advantage of it?

(paraphrasing Lehto) Government has an inherent conflict of interest in performing election administration. Whatever definition might be offered for conflict of interest, it is met by these circumstances. Elections must be completely controlled by We The People.