Heather Gerken has written this Roll Call oped ($), which begins:

After years of electoral crises and near-misses, we have yet to see serious changes in the way we run elections. The good news is that a new style of election reform is starting to emerge, and it has taken root in the offices of two top-tier presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). This new reform paradigm shifts away from the traditional civil rights perspective toward a more pragmatic, data-driven approach. Unyielding in their idealism, the new election reformers attack problems with the hard head of a corporative executive. They look to a variety of institutions (the market, administrative agencies), not just the courts, for solutions. And they are as likely to appeal to traditionally conservative ideas– accountability, competition– as progressive values like participation or empowerment.

I’m much less optimistic than Heather is about the prospects for election reform. I’ll be posting a draft essay of mine on the topic (which has an extensive discussion of the voter identification issue and cases) soon.