In the midst of today’s raging turmoil, it is easy to lose sight of its origin. One contributor, for certain, is the rancorous, wholly polarized debate about the 2020 election. For nearly three years, we’ve been stuck between one political side screaming “we wuz robbed!” while the other smugly intones that the 2020 election was completely “fair and transparent.”

Neither declaration is correct. While there was no proof of determinative fraud, the election produced statistically questionable outcomes in key areas, there were improper constraints on information available to voters, and sweeping, hastily adopted changes had been made to election processes. When the dust settled, many doubts remained.

Unsettled public opinion about the 2020 election results is at the core of many of today’s political convulsions. It triggered Donald Trump’s destructive post-election behavior, leading in turn to the chaos of January 6, his controversial impeachment, and three criminal indictments — the third of which is specifically about the election.

It’s not just a Trump problem; it’s an American problem, with broad implications for future elections. There has never been a thorough, independent assessment of the 2020 election — Trump’s unsuccessful appeals confirmed only that anecdotal evidence of malfeasance was insufficient to justify its reversal.

Understanding what happened in the 2020 election is now more important than ever. All came to a head once more with DOJ Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s latest indictment of the former president for conspiring to overturn the results of that election.

Smith’s underlying premise is what Trump’s political opponents call “The Big Lie.” In essence, that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he knew that he had lost, and therefore his attempt to overturn it was a criminal act.

However politically celebrated, a criminal indictment on that basis is wholly unprecedented. Whether it succeeds in the courtroom remains to be seen, but regardless, it raises fundamental questions regarding constitutionally protected freedom of speech, political reality, and basic fairness — matters of vital interest to all Americans.

Still unanswered questions regarding the 2020 election:

• Do the numbers make sense? How is it possible that lackluster Joe Biden, having run for president from his basement, raked in eight million more votes than Barack Obama in his prime?

The answer is probably not election fraud, as alleged by Trump. More likely, it is the combination of COVID-justified early voting, bulk-mailing of absentee ballots, and massive Democrat vote harvesting by the Zuckerberg-funded poll assistants, opportunistically employed by Democrats and poorly defended by GOP, that carried the day.

• How do we explain the dramatic, simultaneous post-midnight shifts in voting tallies by just enough votes and in just the right places (the critical districts in four swing states) to turn the tide in Biden’s favor?

These shifts were statistical aberrations, suspicious for that reason and never fully explained.

• Can we quantify, in retrospect, the massive effect of FBI-pushed social media censorship (particularly regarding the infamous Hunter Biden laptop), now fully exposed?

That factor alone may have cemented the Biden win. Fraudulent? Not technically. Improper? Absolutely.

And the related questions prompted by the DOJ indictment of the former president:

• What’s true and what’s false? Who decides? Haven’t we learned from years of argument about “misinformation” on issues like COVID and climate change that reasonable people can look at the same fact sets and walk away with completely different conclusions?

• In election space, at what point is the winner certain?

Answer: When he or she is sworn into office. Until that point, challenges of election results and demands for recount are routine, regardless of which authority claims that “it’s over.”

• What is the difference between challenging election results and attempting to overturn those results? Isn’t that what Al Gore did in 2000? Or Stacey Abrams in 2018, and dozens of others over the years?

Votes against certification are commonplace. (As a freshly elected congressman, anti-Trump zealot and January 6 Committee member Jamie Raskin cut his political teeth voting against certification of president-elect Trump in 2017.)

Inciting an armed insurrection would obviously be over the top, but the January 6 riot was clearly not one, and neither incitement nor insurrection was alleged in the Trump indictment.

None of the above is intended to exonerate or excuse former President Trump; we’ll leave that to the courts. But it is worth noting that his recent indictment marks the sixth major action (multi-year Russia collusion allegation, two impeachments, and three criminal indictments) by government entities targeting the man who happens to be their political nemesis and likely 2024 opponent. Politically motivated? You decide.

But the issues that have been festering since the 2020 election and reenergized by the recent Trump indictment deserve resolution. Most importantly, we need elections that actually are fair and transparent, delivering results — and incumbents — we can trust.