A bi-partisan commission has listed a series of recommendations to make our elections process more effective.

• Establishment of a "universal voting registration system." States, rather than local jurisdictions, would be responsible for the accuracy of voter lists. State lists should be interchangeable so that "people would need to register only once in their lifetime, and it would be easy to update their registration information when they move."
• A greater role for states in registering potential voters. In addition, states should make it easier for ex-felons who have met their sentencing and parole requirements to register to vote, with the exception of registered sex offenders.
• Implementation of a uniformly accepted photo identification system to ensure that a would-be voter is the person on a voting list. States should establish more offices, including mobile facilities, to make it easier for non-drivers to register and receive photo IDs.

As much as I hate pushing power away from local governments to state and federal governments, I support it here. In national elections, voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio affect voters in Idaho and Texas. Not just for the presidency, but for the House and Senate as well. I'm not excited about it, but I'll take it.

I find the registered-sex-offenders exception to be odd. You can kill someone, but you can't molest them? I understand the rationale when it comes to things such as lists that give parents a heads up about pedophiles or rapists moving in to their neighborhood, but that has little to do with voting. Am I missing something here?

The more controversial part is the requiring of photo identification. I've commented before that any talk of election reform that does not involve requiring photo identification and proof of citizenship is not a serious discussion. As long as there is the insistence among some on the left that such requirements are beyond the pale, there really isn't much to discuss, in my view. Maybe this will prove to be a good jumping point for a discussion and compromise on how the requirement is implemented (such as requiring that the photo identification be without cost and as convenient as possible).

It is important that as many votes cast as possible are counted. Cutting back on voter fraud or giving less leeway to the perception of voter fraud helps accomplish this by cutting down on or eliminating honest-vote-negating fraudulent votes and making it more difficult for those that would use voter fraud as an excuse to suppress the vote by streamlining what is expected of the voter and what is sufficient for the voter to have.

And as someone that's going to be moving a couple times in the next three years, transportable voter registration is an attractive option to me.