DN Editorial: 'Have to fix that'

THE NIGHT of his re-election, President Obama promised to address the problem of hours-long lines at polling places. "We have to fix that," he said.

Fourteen months later, the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration has released a 100-plus page compendium of sensible, nonideological best practices to improve a confusing, antiquated system.

The recommendations aim to ensure that no American waits more than 30 minutes to vote. They provide a useful road map for states to improve their systems - if politicians and election officials believe it's their job to make it as easy as possible for everyone to vote.

And for states whose leaders do not believe that, the report will give citizens and activists a solid basis for fighting for their rights. This includes states such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas, where Republican lawmakers deliberately are trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters. It also includes Pennsylvania, where Gov. Corbett just asked a judge to reverse his decision to strike down the state's voter-ID law.

One less deliberate barrier is mistake-filled voter-registration systems, the commission says. They slow down lines, send people to the wrong polling places and may prevent millions from casting a ballot. The commission recommends adopting online voter registration and even provides software code to help with the transition.

It also recommends expanding early voting to shorten election-day lines, and adopting technology tools used in the private sector to more accurately predict how many poll workers are needed to keep things moving.

These ideas seem hard to dispute, don't they? Yet, they most likely won't be adopted in GOP-controlled states that, since 2010, have been trying to suppress voter turnout. In these places, shorter waiting times at the polls are a bug, not a feature.

But the credentials of this commission will make its report a solid best-practices standard. It was chaired by two of the most prominent (and partisan) election lawyers in the country: Democrat Robert Bauer and Republican Benjamin Ginsberg. By affirming that government's duty is to make voting easier, the report is a stinging rebuke to voter-suppression tactics.

Congress could help the cause by making a commitment to voting rights, but that appears unlikely. A watered-down set of amendments to shore up the Voting Rights Act, which an activist Supreme Court shredded last year, so far has just one Republican co-sponsor. Meanwhile, voting-rights advocates are playing whack-a-mole with hundreds of restrictions all over the country.

This will be a long and difficult fight. But at least this report shows Americans what they should expect from their voting system and empowers them to fight for their rights. Someday they may once again have a Congress that stands behind them.