EXCERPT

Last November's election made it all too clear that voting machines are fallible and that the reliability of the electoral process people participate in very much depends on where they live. Yet after an initial flurry of vows to do better, political leaders in Washington and in most states seem content to live with this shameful state of affairs. The issue of election reform has become merely another partisan battleground.

Take voter registration, one of the weakest links in the American electoral process. Former President Jimmy Carter, who along with former President Gerald Ford leads the National Commission on Election Reform, underwritten by The Century Foundation, recently observed Peru's national election and wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that its voter registration system is "far superior" to ours. The notion that the impoverished Andean nation could leapfrog past America in electoral professionalism in a few months is a distressing sign of how invested our political parties are in the status quo. Too often Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to restrict access to the voting booth, while Republicans accuse Democrats of being tolerant of some fraud in the name of greater access, and nothing gets done.

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