President Trump’s legal challenge to the Pennsylvania voting process is being heard here at federal court in Williamsport. This litigation is just one going on around the country, and even if they don’t have any impact on the final outcome, it is still an important process to ensure that future elections have more veracity than this past one.

Living and teaching in the former Soviet Union provides me with a unique perspective for the times we are now living in our country. The USSR was a facade in so many ways. One of the more popular expressions was, “the government pretends to pay us as we pretend to work.” This extended into everything including education. Cheating was so rampant, teachers did not even attempt to stop it, and it was impossible to know what students actually did know.

The Swedish government was the first country to recognize the independence of the Soviet Republic of Latvia when it was declared so in 1991. Besides establishing an embassy, they also made a branch campus of their prestigious Stockholm School of Economics in the capital city of Riga in 1994. All the professors were Swedes, but they came up short in the Human Relations Management area and I was hired in 1996 to fill that gap. One of the significant features of this school was that cheating was absolutely forbidden. One strike and you were out. As prestigious as the school became, it was its reputation for integrity that became as highly valued as the quality of its faculty and curriculum.

In the early 2000s, one of my favorite students named Kristaps goofed up and had notes he used for quick review on the back of his calculator which he forgot to remove when he went to take an exam. The proctor instantly saw it and took his exam paper. Though it was clear he did not actually look at the cheat sheet, he was still expelled from school. His fellow students were irate, and every single one signed a petition to reinstate Kristaps. His family had some political clout and even the Latvian Parliament got involved. While all this was going on, he came to me and asked for my help, and I replied, “Kristaps, I will help you in every way I can… to get accepted into another school. I know you did not cheat; I know you simply made a mistake, but the entire integrity of this institution is based on trust. Employers know that when they hire our students or graduate schools accept our students, there is absolutely no doubt that the grades are genuine.”

I gave Kristaps a glowing recommendation and he was able to transfer to the London School of Economics, so he did not suffer in the end. On the other side, the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga became legendary for its commitment to its stated values. Year after year, almost every student was hired before they graduated, in fact, many students ended up in a bidding war from employers. The reason was because these employers knew that those grades were the real grades and that those students did not just understand finance, economics, strategy, and such but also came to appreciate the impact and importance of honesty and integrity.

All this is worth noting as our country is in the throes of what history might look back as a turning point, and not a positive one. Our voting system is far from perfect, but how much “imperfection” is acceptable? It is indisputable that some election fraud did occur this year. Perhaps it was just .001% (a hundred thousand to one) from all the votes, wouldn’t that be acceptable? Perhaps, except when one vote could be a game changer.

Here is a quick review of US history in the 20th century dealing just with presidential elections. In 1916, if presidential hopeful Charles E. Hughes had received one additional vote in each of California’s precincts, he would have defeated President Woodrow Wilson’s re-election bid. In 1948, if Republican Thomas E. Dewey had gotten one vote more per precinct in Ohio and California, the presidential election would have been his rather than the incumbent Harry Truman. (The irony here was that the polls had Dewey so far ahead, many Republicans stayed home. Only a little more than half of the registered voters actually voted). In the 1960 presidential election, an additional one vote per precinct in Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, and Texas would have denied John F. Kennedy the presidency.

It is also true in down ballot elections. In a 1910 election for a New York congressional seat, the Democrat Charles B. Smith won 20,685 votes with his opponent receiving 20,684 — Smith won his seat by one vote. In a 1955 city election in Huron, Ohio, the mayor was elected to office by one vote. In 1962, the governors of Maine, Rhode Island, and North Dakota were all elected by a margin of one vote per precinct.

Even if all the the irregularities of this year’s presidential election could be resolved in the next few weeks (which is a fantasy, they will take months and possibly years to unravel), the best result would be to learn from the mistakes and establish processes and systems that insured that our next election would be a model for the world in securing a fair and honest voting process. It was an emphasis on quality and integrity in restructuring their societies and governments that helped develop the former Soviet republics into becoming prosperous countries. It would be the height of irony that we are sliding toward what those countries so desperately wanted to avoid.