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Every time someone tries to dismiss concerns about, call it 'election integrity," I would point them to the 2018 Election, specifically the Florida Gubernatorial Race. Specifically, Broward County.
An audit of the election was held and determined there were numerous irregularities, even if no actual fraud was detected
The margin between Desantis winning (and all the stuff that followed) vs. Gillum winning (instead of being found drugged out in a hotel room) was 33,000 votes out of 8 million. .4%.
Desantis cleaned house of election supervisors who had delayed or faulty counts, and every election since then has been reported on time, without error, and... surprise, tends to favor Republicans, now.
So one big thing that can be done is to rapidly remove and replace election officials who show questionable performance, bias, or otherwise don't seem interested in a fair, open election. Failure in one's duties should be punished, as I keep on harping.
You know what would really increase trust in elections? If there were somebody or bodies who is actually on the hook, who can be visibly and tangibly punished if a given election has too many 'hitches.' Because fundamentally, the people in charge of ensuring elections are secure ALSO have a bit of incentive to compromise said elections if it serves them. See this Judge in Philadelphia, for instance.
As others have said, ID requirements to cast a vote are reasonable. Limiting mail-in ballots, likewise reasonable. The big one is to ensure transparency when counting votes in high-density, high population areas, where fraud would be easiest to hide.
And there is a reasonable case to be made for areas reporting their results at about the same time. Fraud is harder to achieve if you can't be sure how many votes you have to manufacture to put your side over the top, so being able to report your results after you know what other have reported helps shift the incentives towards cheating.
On the 'unreasonable* side, maybe mandate the death penalty for anyone caught falsifying more than, say, 100 votes. There should certainly be some entity or agency who is in charge of tracking down and punishing election fraud after the election has taken place, so fraudsters can be punished even after the fact. I would even stipulate that the election is not to be overturned if substantial fraud is discovered, but those who perpetrated it should be sanctioned heavily as an example going forward, potentially to include the aforementioned capital punishment.
There should probably be some symmetrical punishment for those who attempt to overturn an election without producing proof of fraud, since that is also damaging to election integrity, false claims of 'rigging' can be 'allowed' but there should be some well-understood process through which such challenges are brought and decided.
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