Badly needed election/voting reforms
1) "faithless electors": About half our states have no requirement that electors cast the votes as their voters have chosen. This is a ridiculous risk to take with our presidential elections.
2) Voter registration should be automatic. If one is a citizen, one should be allowed to vote in the place they call home. If you're poor and couch surf among friends and relatives, it's ridiculous to have to prove where you live in order to vote for president. Sure, maybe it's hard to figure out which alderman you should be voting for --but this shouldn't stop you from voting for federal office. Unless we've decided being democratic is really less important than making sure people have the proper papers.
3) Speaking of ID --if we're going to be stuck with these laws, the government needs to simply provide the ID automatically and the government needs to track down citizenship papers if those are necessary to vote. Citizens should never have to prove their citizenship to exercise their rights --their rights are theirs until the government proves they aren't.
http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/government-elections/info-01-2012/voter-id-laws-impact-older-americans.html
4) Voting options need standardization and modernization (and no, I mean everything but adding technology to voting via machine). People need to be able to vote early, vote by mail, vote absentee, vote while away from home, etc. Everywhere. Period. Many of our states, including some of our bluest ones have antiquated approaches to voting and offer restricted options for absentee voting and almost no other alternatives. That's ridiculous unless Election Day is going to truly be a holiday --which it's not.
5) Election officials should not be partisan officials and they must be restricted from being involved in any partisan activity while they hold their election positions. Not just on the job partisan activity, but off the job activity. Taking on an election related job should mean apart from voting, that one is committed to complete impartiality, including avoiding the appearance of favoring one side or another.
Finally, the rules should be standardized across the nation. It would be progress to have each state do a version of the right thing, but it would be better to have one consistent system nationwide and not reinvent the wheel 51 times.
(PS-Those folks in DC have no votes in congress. That's ridiculous. I often wonder if that would be the case if the city was as white as it is black --but that's a topic for another day)
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thanks for the feedback. 
