The authors of the report by the president's commission recognize the disjointed nature of election oversight, and they seek to address some of those gaps. But they do not begin to address all of them.
That does not mean that the commission's report should be neglected. The recommendations challenge many of the assumptions made by Republican governors and legislators in recent years, and they should be used to encourage a process of improving the voting systems of the United States.
Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center is right when she says...
"The Commission's recommendations are a significant step forward. They make clear that nationwide our voting systems have common problems, which can be fixed with common, national solutions. Especially important is the consensus that we need to modernize voter registration, make early voting available to all Americans, and put systems in place so no one waits longer than 30 minutes to vote. These will be the new benchmarks against which future elections will be judged."
The recommendations of the commission ought not, however, to be seen as an "end of the journey" to democracy.
If we are realistic about the challenge of remaking America as a nation with high-turnout elections and truly representative democracy, what the commission has produced is barely a beginning.
A report is not enough. Recommendations are not enough.
What's required is a teaching moment, led by the president and serious members of Congress, by reformers, academics, media and citizens of good will. And it ought to have as its goal a reshaping of how the United States understands voting and voting rights.
The truth is that, on too many levels, the United States does not respect the right to vote. Nor does it adequately recognize the need to have votes counted and to genuinely reflect voting results in the governance of communities, states and the nation.
Too much is left to chance. That has been made obvious in recent years, not just by the myriad state-based battles over restrictive Voter ID laws but by the US Supreme Court's mangling of the Voting Rights Act.
More than a report is needed, more even than a new version of the Voting Rights Act -- although the proposal made recently by Congressmen John Conyers, D-Michigan and James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, and Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, is a reasonable and needed step in the right direction.
What is ultimately required is an absolute guarantee of the right to vote and the right to have that vote counted. That affirmation should be added to the United States Constitution, in an amendment along the lines of the one proposed last year by Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, and Congressman Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin.
Supported by groups such as FairVote and Color of Change , the Ellison-Pocan "Right to Vote" amendment simply declares :
"SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.
"SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation."
These are proper benchmarks. When the right to vote is guaranteed, when it is constitutionally established as fundamental, that is a strong place of beginning for establishing the infrastructure of genuinely functional and genuinely representative democracy.
"The right to vote is too important to be left unprotected," explains Pocan. "At a time when there are far too many efforts to disenfranchise Americans, a voting rights amendment would positively affirm our founding principle that our country is at its strongest when everyone participates."
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