Something that always bothers me during election time, even in leftist spaces, is the lack of any discussion of direct election tampering. In addition to voter suppression and gerrymandering and such, we know electronic voting machines are seemingly designed for the purpose of tampering, and the dem primaries were blatantly rigged with shitty apps, coin flips, and "rouding errors" that somehow all went for establishment candidates. So, are we really sure any vote totals are legit, or is it a giant psy-op whose results are tailored to produce the preferred political climate for capital?
In my opinion even entertaining the idea of election tampering is ceding the point that an ideal election in the USA (100% turnout, 0 fraud), even by capitalist liberal standards, is just not democracy. First-past-the-post precincts and districts, staggered primary voting, extremely lax election spending laws, media blackouts, the list goes on.
I prefer this framing because it basically forces the other person to try to imagine a radically different system that would counter these problems, and from then on every time they see "Iowa straw poll" they'll remember that this shit is bananas and anti-democratic.