The McCain campaign has issued this press release, which begins:

The McCain-Palin 2008 campaign today announced the formation of the Honest and Open Election Committee, with a mission to ensure that every qualified citizen has the opportunity to vote in a fair and transparent manner. The committee will work with state and local election officials to anticipate, and where possible resolve in advance, problems likely to arise on Election Day.
The advisory committee will be co-chaired by former United States Senators John C. Danforth and Warren B. Rudman. The committee also includes current and former members of Congress and former state secretaries of state, election officials, and state attorneys general, along with prominent academic experts in election law. The diverse composition of the committee reflects the McCain-Palin campaign’s desire to put partisan politics aside in the hope of seeing a fair and transparent election in November….
The Honest and Open Election Committee requested a dialogue between the McCain-Palin campaign and both the Democratic National Committee and the Obama-Biden campaign in letters sent today.

You can find out more about the efforts here. (Note that the first goal of the group is one Democrats would endorse; the second goal, “No qualified voter should have his or her vote canceled or diluted by illegal votes,” echoes Republican (but not Democratic) calls for voter identification laws and a concern (in my view, mostly unfounded) about voter fraud.)
My initial reaction to this is that in spirit this is a step in the right direction, but I don’t expect it to stop one bit aggressive efforts to challenge election administration laws in the battleground states.
To explain, while I don’t know everyone on the impressive list of members of the committee, those I know personally (along with Trevor Potter, Sen. McCain’s general counsel), are people of the highest integrity.
But while the McCain campaign can take the high road and legitimately play by the rules, it can watch as state and local Republican committees fight the election administration wars. For example, as I’ve chronicled, the Republican Party in Ohio is seeking to shut down an effort to allow first time voters to vote absentee at the same time they register to vote during a five day period at the end of this month, despite the fact that the law (passed by the Republican legislature) allows this procedure. And Trevor Potter, in an effort to refute claims that a local party in Michigan was going to target for vote challenges voters whose homes had been foreclosed, forwarded to the election law listserv a statement from the McComb county chairman. The statement not only denied such an effort would take place, but it included the following unsubstantiated charge: “in 2004, at least 46 long-deceased voters managed to rise from their graves and vote in heavy Democrat-leaning precincts. That’s the kind of ballot integrity Democrats favor in Michigan.” Not a word from Trevor distancing himself from this language.
This is not to say that only Republicans have played the election administration game this year. I’ve also criticized Ohio Dem. Secretary of State. Brunner for how she plans to handle certain absentee ballots sent in by McCain supporters.
So unless the McCain campaign and the Obama campaign are willing to make a concerted effort to rein in state and local party election administration efforts, as well as the actions of partisan election officials in battleground states, I’m dubious this effort will make any difference in the election administration wars. As for the possibility of bipartisan cooperation Bob Bauer’s latest posting shows considerable distance between the parties regarding who is responsible for the election administration wars.