Fagan: We're working hard to rebuild trust in our elections

Shemia Fagan is Oregon's secretary of state. She can be reached at oregon.sos@oregon.gov.

In a 2020 survey of dictionary.com users, "unprecedented" was chosen as the word of the year. There's little wonder why. In addition to the formerly unimaginable devastation of a worldwide pandemic, the culmination of over 400 years of racial injustice, catastrophic storms, wildfires and flooding across the country, the U.S. was in the middle of one of the most divisive elections in our lifetime.

While the stakes of the election alone were enough to merit the label "unprecedented," the 2020 election was also mired in a scourge of misinformation meant to undermine the foundational elements of our democracy. There is little wonder that we are facing a crisis of confidence in government institutions like we have never seen before.