Our election system is far from perfect, but it’s much better than its critics would have you believe.

Even before all the votes had been counted, President Donald Trump and others were sowing doubt about the Nov. 6 election, renewing claims of massive voter fraud. Such claims have been researched and refuted repeatedly, but the president and his supporters continue to accuse illegal immigrants and Democrats of widespread conspiracies that aim to steal wins from Republicans.

Trump used Twitter to amplify his claims, demanding that officials stop counting ballots in Florida and declare Republicans the winners in the Senate and gubernatorial races:

“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” he tweeted. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”

Never mind that such a move would be illegal. Or that there was no evidence of missing ballots, nor of forged ballots, nor of ballots that “showed up out of nowhere.” Florida’s elections were messy, contentious and mismanaged, but Trump’s allegations of corruption appear to be baseless.

A few days later in an interview, Trump again claimed fraud, saying many unqualified voters cast ballots, then went to their cars to change their hats and shirts and got back in line.

“If you buy, you know, a box of cereal, if you do anything, you have a voter ID … The only thing you don’t is if you’re a voter of the United States,” Trump complained.

Kansas does have strict voter ID laws. It’s one of about 10 states – the numbers flex with court challenges – that require voters to show photo ID. It’s not clear the measure improves the integrity of elections. It does make voting more difficult for some.

Valid arguments can be made that photo ID is reasonable as states make voting more accessible by adopting same-day registration, expand advance voting and take other voter-friendly measures.

But in many states, photo ID laws are adopted in concert with steps that reduce accessibility to voting.

Georgia, for example, passed photo ID laws and a law to aggressively purge voter rolls, eliminating people who had not voted in recent elections. It also moved to close lots of polling sites. In one case, plans to close most of the polling sites in a black-majority county created so much bad publicity that officials backtracked.

In Kansas, Ford County officials moved Dodge City’s only polling site to an event center outside the city, citing the need for a site that was accessible to those with disabilities. Officials seemed not to notice that many disabilities prevent people from driving, thereby rendering the site less accessible.

Over the last decade in the Indianapolis area, Republicans reduced or eliminated early voting sites in counties with lots of Democratic voters, even while expanding advance voting in counties that tended to vote Republican, an investigation by the Indianapolis Star found.

So it goes across the country. Despite such obstacles, voters turned out in relatively big numbers Nov. 6. In Kansas, turnout was about 56 percent of registered voters, up six percentage points from 2014.

My experiences with local election officials indicate that most try to be professional and fair. On a larger scale, credible research and the record show that the system’s integrity is solid, but with some vulnerabilities, especially in the use of absentee ballots.

Like past elections, the Nov. 6 elections were, on the whole, fair and legitimate.

Not perfect, by any means. Elections are run by counties and states, and there are variances in how well they do their jobs. Florida continues to be the poster child of how to screw up an election. And laws and practices adopted by some states and individual officials raise issues of gerrymandering and voter suppression. In comparison, fraud committed by voters is a minuscule issue.

Still, the president and others persist with sleazy and false accusations against voters. With each claim, a bit more of the public’s trust in its government crumbles.

Fewer and fewer Kansans’ holiday travel will take them pass fields where the wheat was grown to make their Thanksgiving meal complete.

Flour for the bread, the pie crust and the stuffing (or dressing if you prefer) comes to you from wheat farmers. But knowledge of farming and appreciation for what it provides us daily are fading as Americans’ direct connections with agriculture disappear.

As more people move into suburbs and urban areas, fewer people live in rural America. And as our nation’s farms grow more efficient and more productive, it takes fewer people to produce ever-more food.

For example, corn fields that produced 40 bushels an acre in 1950 now often produce 170 bushels an acre. Such gains are seen throughout farming and are possible because of advances in technology and science.

They also defy the much ballyhooed political divide that exists between urban and rural America. Few other achievements exemplify the mutually beneficial relationship between rural and urban communities.

For more than a century, scientists – often at universities in urban areas – have been working collaboratively with farmers and ag-related businesses. Together they have developed more drought-resistant varieties of crops; improved the diets of farm animals, and as a result the nutrition they offer to those who consume them; and made numerous other advances.

Those advances are what allow about 450 farmers in Minnesota to produce more than 44 million turkeys every year. If you are having turkey this Thanksgiving, it’s likely from Minnesota, which leads the nation in producing and processing turkeys.

True, some Americans don’t think such advances are a good thing. For decades, Americans have argued about food. Some decry what they call industrialized farming, for example, while others argue that larger farms are often the better environmental choice, providing efficient and affordable means to feed billions of people. Debates about organic food, vegan diets and genetically modified products can be had daily if you’re looking for a food fight.

What such discussions show us is just how good we have it.

Americans have an embarrassment of choices for our food. Grocery stores, health food stores, food cooperatives, online clubs and stores, membership super-centers, discount groceries, farmers markets – the list grows continually.

And it’s all relatively cheap. Americans spend less on their groceries than in most countries.

The numbers have been getting harder to calculate because of our changing lifestyles. Since 2010, Americans have been spending more for food from restaurants than from grocery stores. That’s something of an oversimplification of the figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but it gets at the essence of the change.

We eat out, or we bring home food from a restaurant. At the same time many grocery stores are offering lots of ready-to-eat options, from salad bars to fried chicken. That preparation, handling and processing add to our food costs.

The USDA tracks a number of prices and trends to calculate the cost of food and how it’s changing. Here’s an excerpt from a USDA website:

“Over the last two decades, motor fuel and household energy prices have experienced double-digit annual price swings, while food prices have posted annual increases of between 0 and 6 percent, for an average annual increase of 2.4 percent.”

How much families spend on groceries, represented as a percent of their disposable income, correlates to their wealth. The less you make, the bigger the percentage. But on average, according to the USDA, Americans spent about 10 percent of their disposable income on food in 2016, split about evenly between food eaten at home and food eaten outside the home.

About a hundred years ago, the nation’s urban population surpassed its rural population. The demographic split took longer to occur in farming states such as Kansas. But here and elsewhere, the trend has meant that fewer of us have direct ties to the land. As an agriculture professor once explained, with each passing generation, fewer people have direct knowledge about farming and the source of their food.

Even as our individual ties to farming disappear, Americans would be wise to remember just how good their farmers are at growing food.

Julie Doll formerly worked at newspapers in Kansas, California, New York and Indiana. She grew up on a farm in Finney County, Kansas, and her brothers continue to farm there.

According to family history, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother immigrated to Kansas from Germany in the 1880s.

They settled in a Barton County community already established by German immigrants who had started farms, created a Catholic parish and opened businesses. My grandfather was born in a sod dugout, before the family moved to a more traditional farmhouse.

My family’s story is not much different from that of many Kansans. Most of us are the descendants of immigrants, many of whom had more hope than money and more optimism than knowledge of what they were getting into.

They came to Kansas to build better lives for themselves and their families. They also built churches and schools, businesses and roads. In large part, they built Kansas.

That doesn’t mean they were always welcome. As nasty and divided as we seem today, our politics were sometimes even nastier.

For example, in the decade before the Civil War, slavery split the nation not just in two, but into numerous factions. The debate over whether Kansas would be a free state or a slave state caused a huge brawl on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

As described by House historians, more than 30 House members were involved in the fight on Feb. 6, 1858, as debate over a pro-slavery constitution for Kansas devolved into insults and then fisticuffs. The ruckus ended debate for the night. Eventually the House narrowly accepted a competing constitution from Kansas abolitionists.

And slavery was not the nation’s only fault line. Immigration also angered many Americans in the mid-1800s. Famine in Ireland, railroad construction and the California gold rush were among several factors that brought immigrants to the United States – in larger numbers than today if measured as a percent of the overall population.

The American Party – also known as the Know-Nothing Party – was created to stop them.  A 2017 piece in Smithsonian magazine encapsulated the party’s platform and influence this way:

“At its height in the 1850s, the Know Nothing party … included more than 100 elected congressmen, eight governors, a controlling share of half-a-dozen state legislatures from Massachusetts to California, and thousands of local politicians. Party members supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals; a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants; mandatory Bible reading in schools; and the elimination of all Catholics from public office. …”

The Know Nothings gained political ground in the 1850s in part because the Democratic and Whig parties were falling apart over disagreements about slavery.

Abraham Lincoln, pondering his political affiliation, wrote in 1855:

“I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty …”

The Know-Nothings faded from historical significance as the newly formed Republican Party gained traction, and as the need for soldiers in the North and South grew. According to a history compiled by a group associated with Ellis Island, the 1864 Republican Party platform stated:

“Foreign immigration which in the past has added so much to the wealth, resources, and increase of power to the nation … should be fostered and encouraged.”

It’s clear that our immigration laws and policies need an overhaul. Sensible means of providing opportunities for immigrants while looking out for taxpayers and national security are clearly possible. After all, this country has been making immigration work for it for more than 200 years.

Our politicians’ refusal to adopt reforms that recognize our values and ideals seems less the fault of immigrants than of those politicians who traffic in fear and bigotry.

As a nation, we have always had such politicians. In the past, we have seldom allowed them to prevail.

If you thought a mentally unstable man with access to explosives would be enough to get politicians to restore maturity to our national conversation, well, you were wrong.

It appears, instead, to have made the conversation even crazier.

Cesar Sayoc, a 56-year-old man from Florida, is accused of mailing bombs to more than a dozen people and media outlets he deemed critics of President Donald Trump.

As the crime was unfolding, with more devices found each day, many on the left self-righteously proclaimed: See, I told you Trump’s rhetoric would lead to violence.

On the right, many blowhards pronounced the bombs a hoax, with radio personality Rush Limbaugh explaining, “Republicans just don’t do this kind of thing.”

History shows clearly that neither major political party limits membership to only sane, law-abiding people.

Just as it was a Democrat who targeted Republicans at a congressional baseball practice in June 2017, it appears Sayoc, a Republican, targeted Democrats and others about whom Trump has complained.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, CNN, Rep. Maxine Waters, Joe Biden and George Soros were among those Sayoc is accused of trying to murder. All are frequent targets of Trump’s complaints.

This does not make the president responsible for Sayoc’s actions, just as Democrats were not to blame for James Hodgkinson’s decision to shoot Republicans at that baseball practice.

But it does raise the question of where our political leaders are taking us. What is the aim of rhetoric that demonizes any and all critics? What are followers expected to do when the president cheers a politician for assaulting a reporter? What’s the desired reaction among Democratic officials who urge supporters to publicly denigrate and harass political foes?

After Sayoc’s arrest, Trump appeared at a campaign rally in North Carolina, where he blamed the media for repulsive political rhetoric.

“The media’s constant unfair coverage, deep hostility and negative attacks only serve to drive people apart and to undermine healthy debate,” the president said.

The next day, a Jewish-hating gunman killed 11 people at a synagogue in Philadelphia, so Trump headed to another campaign rally to again denounce journalists.

However, it wasn’t a journalist who labeled Maxine Waters “low IQ,” called an alleged former mistress “horseface,” claimed Joe Biden was “weak, both mentally and physically,” or threatened that the nation would suffer mob violence if Republicans lost power in November.

That’s just a tiny sampling of Trump’s boorish attacks on his critics.

And as Trump was egging on the crowd in North Carolina with “lock her up” chants, his son, Donald Jr. was in Montana, calling a Democratic senator a “piece of garbage.”

Some argue such attacks makes the president responsible for crimes committed by unhinged fans. Being a believer in personal accountability and the First Amendment, I disagree. But words do matter, which is why the president is responsible for degrading the quality of our political system.

Not just with boorish, hate-filled comments, but also with unprecedented dishonesty.

Obvious, recent examples include outlandish claims about middle-class tax cuts, immigration and protections for those with pre-existing conditions. Trump’s statements are so far out of the bounds that they must be called lies. There’s no nice explanation for being so wrong repeatedly.

We’ve long known that the president believes the end justifies the means – that dishonesty in the pursuit of political victory is not just acceptable but encouraged. Trump’s attacks on the press allow him to shirk responsibility, further divide Americans and discredit the people trying to hold him accountable.

When journalists point out the president is factually wrong, it doesn’t make them enemies of the people. It makes them journalists.

Are all in the media flawless?

Heck no. We’re human.  And while some in media, especially on TV, shouldn’t be considered journalists at all, they are outnumbered by reporters and editors doing solid, important work. The bias and errors of a relative few don’t negate Trump’s crass dishonesty.

When we reach the point at which loyalty to the president outweighs acceptance of reality, we have lost our senses – and our integrity. We have followed our political leaders to a miserable place where right and wrong are as changeable as shoes.

Without question, the biggest cost of running public schools is personnel.

The same is true for many businesses and other endeavors: Paying the people who keep the operation running is the biggest expense.

So it’s not surprising that pay for teachers, administrators and others often becomes an issue. If you aim to control education costs, then people are a huge factor.

Recently, the Wichita Eagle reported that the Wichita school board boosted the pay package of Superintendent Alicia Thompson to more than $300,000 a year. That size of salary at a public school district in Kansas prompted talk, some of it disgruntled.

Down the street, the president at Wichita State University earns even more. But salaries paid to public university leaders seldom get the scrutiny the public gives K-12 leaders. That situation, however, seems to be changing as university-level pay continues to jump.

Purdue University trustees, for example, recently voted to pay President Mitch Daniels $830,000 for the year, after they decided he reached goals regarding such things as student graduation rates, research productivity and fundraising. Their decision resulted in newspaper headlines and, as in Wichita, a variety of reactions, not all of them pleased.

I worked in Lafayette, Indiana, several years and still follow the news there. I’ve long respected Daniels, even when I disagreed with his political positions. A former Republican governor, Daniels believes in ambitious goals, and in using objective metrics to measure how successful you are in reaching them. He does a lot of things right.

But should any public university pay its president more than $800,000 a year?

True, that’s not even close to what many pay their football and basketball coaches, but such outsized salaries should give pause.

When is it too much? What’s a fair amount for taxpayers, most of whom won’t ever earn $100,000 a year.

In Kansas, some right-wing political groups have campaigned against what they describe as riches being earned by public school administrators.

But the Kansas Association of School Boards went on the defensive. In a blog, Mark Tallman, KASB associate executive director, argued that Kansas school superintendents on average earn less than the typical CEO in the state. Using data from the federal Department of Labor, Tallman argued that the size of paychecks earned by school administrators lagged those earned in the private sector, on average.

Such comparisons might have their uses, but differences in the kinds of enterprises that are used to calculate the CEO averages undermine the effort. Plus, the tactic ignores the issue of income disparity, which has grown into a major political issue.

Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported on an analysis from Equilar, a compensation and research company that found salaries for CEO’s at the nation’s biggest companies hit a new high in 2017.

The report also noted that for the 100 largest, publicly traded companies, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay was 253-to-one.

Other studies also have noted huge disparities between CEO earnings and workers’ wages.

The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, noted that between 1978 and 2017, “inflation-adjusted compensation based on realized stock options of the top CEO’s increased 1,070 percent.” That was greater than the stock markets’ growth and “substantially greater than the painfully slow 11.2 percent growth” in workers’ average compensation.

The EPI also reported that CEO-to-worker compensation was 20-to-1 in 1965. That meant the average CEO made 20 times what his average employee made. It measured the ratio at 312-to-one in 2017.

Such disparities are indefensible.

Why public institutions would want to emulate them is puzzling. They would do better to reject the notion that huge paychecks define a person’s worth. Especially when their “performance” or “merit” raises are earned by laying off their workers, cutting their benefits and pensions, and withholding raises.

There’s no single right ratio, given the differences in public entities and private businesses. But something in the area of five-to-one seems reasonable for much of the public and nonprofit sectors. We all ought to recognize something is amiss if public money is being used to create bigger disparities between top earners and average workers.

Author’s note: More information about Kansas school salaries and other K-12 data can be found here