On an otherwise very happy Election Day this year, one dark spot was the mess the city made of processing new registrations and absentee ballots.

This failure went beyond the expected "I thought I registered but I never got a card." I saw many people coming in to the polling place with valid brand new registration cards, mailed to them by the city, only to be nowhere on the voter rolls. Nor on the supplemental rolls, printed out the day before.

Voting provisionally isn't the end of the world, but because in most cases that vote will not be counted it's frustrating for someone excited to cast a vote for the first time.

And then there were the "recieved after Election Day" absentee ballots.

Sure, the City Commissioners office should be reformed. Might be a good topic for the budget talks. But, to fix the voting administration problems, we should look bigger. Project Vote has compiled links to examples of recent public support for a new, federal, way of handling voter registration. The goal would be to have the federal government, rather than individuals or third-party registration drives, be responsible for getting every of-age citizen on the rolls. Look at the arguments below after the break, and let's start advocating for this.

EDIT: Kati says below, "If you are interested in working on election law reform in PA, there is a meeting on Friday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. at the Labor Council office (22 S. 22nd St.) to debrief the election protection efforts of various non-partisan groups, and to begin to strategize about a legislative agenda on election reform in 2009."