Heather Gerken offers this commentary at The New Republic Online (free, but registration required). It begins:

Yesterday, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released the results of a national study of election practices. Created in the wake of the 2000 presidential election, the commission is charged with improving how elections are run. Unfortunately, Congress gave the new agency a modest mandate, little money, and less clout. The EAC has been so embattled that the National Association of Secretaries of State demanded that Congress dismantle it before all of its members had even been appointed (a request that, fortunately, was not granted).
Still, even without the authority accorded to most federal agencies, the EAC can get something done. In politics, information is power, and the EAC is uniquely suited to use that power to catalyze reform. The study released yesterday, which documents election practices in different states and localities, is an important first step. But it also presents much of its information in disaggregated and difficult-to-navigate form, and it does not provide a full set of comparative rankings on every issue that matters to voters.
Now the EAC should use its data to create explicit, comprehensive rankings of states and localities, shaming those local governments that are doing a poor job of running elections and rewarding those that are excelling. It’s a strategy taken directly from the playbook of some human rights and environmental organizations, which have long used rankings to prod nations into improving their practices. The strategy works for a simple reason: No one wants to be at the bottom of a list.