In the wake of the recent U.S. midterm elections, media coverage in a couple of states has focused almost as much on the electoral process itself, as on who actually won or lost. In Florida and Georgia, tight races and problems with voting systems have made ballot-counting more controversial than almost any time since the 2000 presidential election, when the contest for the presidency ended up being decided by the Supreme Court.

Why does a seemingly simple task like counting (and recounting) votes turn out to be so difficult? Are the problems technical, or political? Is somebody incompetent at their job, or is criminal activity threatening the legitimacy of American elections? Is there a way to improve the electoral process to make sure everybody eligible has the chance to vote, and that all votes get counted accurately?

Let’s start by looking at what happened in Florida, where a few important races were so close (less than half a percentage point difference between candidates) that the narrow margins automatically triggered recounts. This happened with the contests to determine Florida’s next governor and fill one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats, as well as the race for state agriculture commissioner. When an election is that close, even a slight change in the numbers could alter the outcome. Since every vote is important, any problems or irregularities quickly receive intense scrutiny—and it seems like this year, there were plenty of problems and irregularities.

For instance, some voters requested mail-in ballots but never received them. Other ballots were mailed in, but failed to arrive before the election deadline. Some that did arrive on time were missing required signatures, or had signatures that didn’t match the ones on record. Some provisional ballots (used when voters vote at the wrong location or can’t prove their identity) had similar issues. Special forms were sent to voters whose ballots had these problems, so they could correct them—but some of those forms listed the wrong deadlines for returning them. More than 2,000 early voting ballots (letting people vote before election day is meant to increase turnout and decrease long lines at the polls) were “mishandled” and so did not get counted at first. The machines that scan ballots may also have broken down.

Meanwhile in Georgia, where another tight race for governor also led to a recount, there were even more problems. Errors in registration data interfered with some voters’ ability to cast ballots. Polling place supervisors were accused of enforcing rules inconsistently. Voters in one county were turned away for being too late, even though the rules said they should have at least been allowed to cast provisional ballots. Other locations simply ran out of provisional ballots. One county rejected hundreds of absentee ballots for problems like failing to list the voter’s correct date of birth, until a judge ruled that this violated the Civil Rights Act. Many people (especially Democrats) also objected to the fact that the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, was also serving as Georgia’s secretary of state—meaning he was overseeing the same election that he was running in. (He won.)

Looking at all of these issues together, it seems clear that instead of there being one big problem with the way voting is handled, there are many small problems. Some of the errors mentioned involved the Postal Service. Some involved voters making mistakes on their own ballots. Some involved election officials who planned poorly or made incorrect judgments. Some involved technology failing, or people’s inability to handle technology (like voting machines, scanning machines, and government websites for reporting vote tallies).

With so many possible ways for things to go wrong, where should a strategy for improving the process even begin?

In a 2014 report, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration made a number of recommendations, including: making online voter registration and early voting available to everyone; cooperation among states to update voter lists; improving how polling places are selected, equipped and run; and improving the quality of voting technology.

However, that same report also pointed out that election procedures vary across thousands of jurisdictions, that the officials supervising those procedures are not always impartial, and that the actual person helping you at your polling places is usually “a temporary employee who has volunteered for one-day duty and has received only a few hours of training.” In other words, there are plenty of good ideas for improving the way we vote and count votes—but no way to guarantee those ideas get adopted everywhere.

Reports that recommend “best practices” can only do just that: recommend. Yet some states and jurisdictions manage voting better than others, so there are clearly better and worse ways to handle the job. Developing a national voting system, rather than thousands of local ones, could enable the best methods to rise to the top. By comparing what has been working with what has not, and requiring all states to adopt the most effective techniques, at least some of the more obvious problems could be addressed. The Presidential Commission on Election Administration’s main recommendations could then be implemented instead of just being suggestions in a report. People whose state and local governments are not doing enough to improve voting procedures would have a standard for comparison, and a guarantee of what they should be able to expect. Since adoption of such a standard would be a major legislative achievement, and therefore would require bipartisan support, it could also help remove political partisanship from local administration of elections.

No voting system will ever be perfect. There will always be accidents, mistakes, and even intentional wrongdoing. It is also possible that what seems like a solution in one area could cause new problems in other areas. (For instance, despite the inefficiency of some states’ outdated voter registration systems, the fact that voter registration systems were targeted by hackers during the 2016 general election, and that serious data breaches keep popping up in the news, indicates that shifting to a more electronic/online model brings its own potential risks.) However, if the goal is to come up with the best system possible, then one promising strategy would be to address the root problem: a lack of national standards. Since the current status quo is a confusing mess, national voting standards seems like an idea plenty of Americans would vote for, and hopefully their votes will count.